


Not To Despair

by Gazyrlezon



Series: The Bloody Wolf [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Butterfly Effect, Gen, Will probably add more tags as this continues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-09-10 21:25:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8939935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gazyrlezon/pseuds/Gazyrlezon
Summary: He is probably thinking he shouldn’t let m’lady go stealing food. Arya just knew he was going to be stupid now.With a sigh, she turned back towards him.   Why is it always me who has to stop him from getting killed?Continuation of To Ride in A Pack and To Befriend the Wolf. You might want to read those first.





	1. Gendry

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, how nice it were if I were to turn into GRRM …
> 
> (And yes, this is still exclusivly book canon, with just possibly one exception which seemingly no one noticed, and that one was a long time ago)

Ringing, ringing, always ringing was the steel, and Gendry did his best to keep it that way. He was determined not to give anyone cause to wonder about his presence there, inside Master Rymond’s forge. It felt good to be back in one again, almost like coming home, and he’d even exchanged a few words with Kevan and Koval, but of course it was obvious that they didn’t really feel like he belonged. 

The squire of Ser Brynden Tully just wasn’t really supposed to be doing the work of a common man. 

_And who’d ever prefer smithing to squiring, anyway?_ Gendry could certainly think of no one but himself, and even he would’ve scoffed at the very thought of this idea just a fortnight ago. 

Before the dungeon. 

Before the wolves, howling, always howling in his head and dreams and memories. 

Now, every time he had a sword in hand, intending to fight with it, even if it was just a mock-fight, suddenly he felt all squesy and more uncomfortable than he’d care to admit to anyone. 

What made it worse was that he wasn’t really _against_ the fighting, either. Sometimes it even went fine, and sometimes he almost enjoyed it, to. But then at other times he couldn’t help but think of Arya asking him to spar with her, and from there it was only a short way to her speaking up for him in that chamber, and then to the dark, wet walls enclosing him while he lay on – or rather, _in_ – a muddy patch of ground and his own shit. 

And now he was out of it, rewarded for something he wasn’t sure he’d ever done, and somehow wanted none of it. 

_Bloody idiot, you should be enjoying yourself while it lasts, not shun somethin’ every_ _damned riverlord’s son’s been dreamin’ about since he’s learnt how to walk._

Truly, how many boys _would_ shun the chance to squire for someone with such a name? Gendry had been born and stayed in the City for all his life, but even he knew who Ser Brynden Tully was. Maybe there weren’t as many stories about him as there were about Ser Arthur Dayne, or Ser Barristan the Bold, but he was still a well-known man, and unlike some other well-known ones, respected. 

Moreover, it was well-known that Ser Brynden Tully wasn’t one to take on squires. It had taken him a while to figure that one out – everyone but him had assumed that it was common knowledge, and perhaps it was, here – which made the who business even more unusual than it had already been. 

Somehow, sometimes he felt that he’d preferred to squire for someone less noteworthy; that, he felt, would have been less inadequate. 

And then he’d burst into a fit of laughter because the idea of him squiring for anybody, even a hedge knight, had always belonged into idle daydreams, not into his real life. 

He knew he should be happy, and suspected that he was, somewhere, but still … 

_If it wasn’t the Blackfish_ _…_

Maybe then he’d be able to beat out a sword without seeming suspicious, without asking eyes hovering over him, constantly. He could practically _feel_ their thoughts, their questions, the questions of those that didn’t understand. 

“Ah, there you are, boy! I’ve been running all over the bloody castle in search of you, though I’d suppose this should’ve been the obvious place to look.” 

At last, his knight had found him. Somewhere, in some deep pit inside him, he suspected he was even a bit proud of it all. 

Anyway, that was deep inside him, and he wasn’t really sure of it himself, either. 

“Time for lessons, you know. Can’t just do nothing all day. But then, I’d hardly call all that hammering _nothing_ , if I were honest.” 

The old man gave a laugh, then walked out of the forge again. 

Nimbly, Gendry followed him out. Together they crossed the little yards, came by barracks that hadn’t been there the day before or that Gendry hadn’t noticed yet, crossed the small arm of the Tumblestone that flowed right through the castle – hence its name – walked by some more badly-built shelters full of peasants who’d run from the fighting on the river’s other side, all the way into the training yard of Riverrun. 

He suspected he shouldn’t feel any disappointment over the fact that Arya wasn’t there, but could do little to avoid it. _Stupid! By now I should know better_ , he thought to himself, _she’s never here, not anymore._

In fact, come to think of it, he’d seen her but once since she’d come back, and that was when she’d called the wolves to howl, and threatened to lead them into battle yet again. 

_Warg_ , he thought, “You shouldn’t be so surprised, fool!” 

Still, he _had_ been surprised by what she’d done in that little chamber. Not so much at what she could do, he’d seen some of that before, after all, and if it now was much more impressive, well, then obviously she’d gained practice. The howls might haunt him now, but it were her words that had truly terrified him. By now he knew when she was lying, and she hadn’t been lying, then, when she told them about the people she’d killed, or that she’d readily kill some more to get him out of his chains. 

_And she used it all to free me._

He wasn’t sure what to think about that. If she’d never told anyone, why, she’d just be the same Arya that had been gone. But now she’d chosen to tell everyone, and all only to get him out of his chains. 

By the time he had gotten his hands on a practice sword Gendry was confused, and probably a bit angry, too, though he wasn’t sure as to why or at what. Maybe at the world, he thought, or maybe just himself. Maybe at Arya, too, who’d turned up playing the part of monster and hero both at once only to disappear into her chamber, and never again coming out. 

And since he didn’t want to intrude on her – and probably a bit afraid of her, too, he admitted to himself – he didn’t go to see her, either, which meant that he’d lost the only friend he’d had in the castle. 

He missed it. He missed the stories they used to trade in the evenings, missed the time when she’d made him drink sour wine and pretended, just for a moment, to be a real lady, and all that missing only served to make him angrier. 

Though he never looked forward to it, he often hoped that the fighting would help, that hacking at the air or a wooden puppet or the Blackfish would somehow make him feel better, but it didn’t. No matter how much he threw himself into it, no matter how hard he tried to hit the Blackfish, the old man wouldn’t stop to slip from his grasp as easily as Arya had done, back on the run. 

A blacksmith’s strength, he’d found, were very little against the skill of any swordsman even if he was only half-trained, no matter how old he was or how white and weathered his hair, and no matter if the man was only a girl smaller than he himself. 

In the end, when a small crowd had gathered for their gawking – Riverrun was more a village than a castle now, in truth, with all the people who’d come here for protection having erected all sorts of crude shelters against the walls, and you didn’t often got to see the Blackfish fight – when Gendry was bathed in more sweat than after a good day in a forge, Ser Brynden let him go. Looking at the yard and the castle, Gendry could see the sun had already begun to set, casting the walls and people into sharp relief-like shadows, which made the world look almost dream-like. He might have fallen asleep then and there, or he might have started shouting at them all, but he kept himself back. 

Around them, some boys had found sticks somewhere and where play-fighting on their own. He hadn’t noticed them before, and now wondered how he’d managed that, with all the noise they made. 

It took him some time to realize that what he’d first taken for screams was, in fact, laughter. 

_Wasn’t long ago that I’d have played at swords, m’self._

What a strange idea that seemed, now, to _play_ with swords. 

The Blackfish gestured for him to follow, and together they made their way in the great hall, where it was quiet for now. Not long, and the crowd would come in, to sleep for the night. 

“You did well, boy.” 

“I was terrible.” 

“No. Well, you were, in a way, I’d guess. But you’ve understood the important thing.” 

Gendry was halfway through a defeated nod when he realized what the man had actually said. Surprised, he raised his head again, to look at the knight. He didn’t understand at all. 

“These boys out there, would you say they enjoy the bits of sparring they’re doing?” 

“I’d expect so.” 

“What about you, then? Do you enjoy it?” 

“No”, Gendry told the man, then added, “I hate it.” 

“That’s what I meant. You don’t enjoy it. Look around you.”, he added, pointing at the empty tables, the abandoned dais, the few forgotten bits of straw lying on the ground, “Right now there’s not much in here, but an hour or two and you’ll find that scores of men, women and children come here for sleep every night.” 

Gendry knew that, of course. He’d spent his first night in Riverrun in this hall, before he’d shared a room with Kevan and Koval. 

“They had to flee from the fighting, or else they’d be dead by now.” 

“And yet their children play at swords for fun. Surprising how many people never realize it, isn’t it?” 

_Realize what?_

The Blackfish looked at him for a moment, straight in his eyes, then sighed and continued: 

“Don’t fight because you think it’s fun. It’s not, and never has been. Fight because you _must_. You? You understand that. But think about how many knights there are in this war, right now, who haven’t noticed that yet, and how many of them maybe never will.” 

Finally, slowly, Gendry began to connect the dots, like how he’d combine the letters in Maester Vyman’s lessons until they made a word. 

“And so the people still have to run.” 

“Exactly. You know why I never took any squires? I had one, once, and first thing the fool did when he’d been dubbed was to get himself killed.” 

Finally, he understood, and that he already had. He wondered when that had happened. When they’d left the City? When Lommy had died? Or maybe only in the dungeon? 

And now that he thought about it … why would one continue at all? Why had Ser Brynden taken on a lowborn nameless boy as squire when he’d refused high lord’s sons? 

The Blackfish had already turned back, and Gendry sensed that he’d been dismissed, but still, he couldn’t help it, he had to know. 

“So why have you taken on me, then?” 

The old man looked back at him, his eyes weary and tired. 

“Because when I first saw you, I recognized that look in your eyes, and knew that won’t happen with you.” 

Sweeping his arms around the hall, the Blackfish said: “Remember this, boy. Remember this hall, and those who have to sleep in it. And that knighthood isn’t about fighting, or at least not only about it. Any old fool can learn how to fight. It’s about when _not_ to fight.” 

And while Ser Brynden turned around to walk back to his chambers, Gendry swore himself that he’d remember. 

So lost to his thoughts, Gendry only looked up when the children began to come in, running and shouting around the hall before their parents – if they still had parents, that was, if not, it was probably uncles or aunts or just whoever else was around – put them to sleep on whatever pieces of straw they’d been able to find in the castle. 

Numbly, he made his way to his own bed, now inside his own little chamber in the main keep, just beside the Blackfish’s own. Sometimes he missed the company of friends around him, be they Arya or some of the boys at Master Mott’s forge back in the City, or even Kevan and Kobal, whom he barely knew and had seldom exchanged as much as a word with. 

At other times he’d just be glad to be alone, after a long and draining day of knighthood-training. Today almost felt like one of these times, except that Gendry wanted to tell someone a story, and there was nobody there to listen to it. He felt there should be a campfire somewhere, and the sounds of the wild around him. Now all he had was his bull’s head’s helmet, and it couldn’t listen to stories, of course. 

It surprised him how much he was missing that; after all, it hadn’t really been the best of times. He’d started the storytelling when Arya hadn’t said a word for days after she’d had to kill Lommy, while they were all starving and freezing out in the open, fearing the rain and cold as much as a bandit’s knife. And yet somehow, it had managed to worm its way into his life so successfully that he couldn’t really live without it anymore. 

After quite some time he finally fell asleep, worn out from the day. Then he woke again not very much later, dimly remembering howls and shouts in his ears while he frantically searched with his hands for something evil and twisting and probably imagined, before falling back to sleep once more when he’d made sure that there was nothing there at all, and it had only been his mind tricking him. 

When finally he woke to find it was _actually_ morning, he found himself wondering how Arya’ night might’ve been. If there was anyone who could understand him now, than probably it would be her. 

And not all that long ago, maybe he would’ve gone over to her chambers to ask her, or told her of his nightmare, or maybe even the story that he’d been itching to tell her the night before, though he’d by now mostly forgotten what it’d been about. 

He was almost at it, before he remembered what had happened, and that he wasn’t at all sure how to deal with her anymore. How did you talk to someone who’d slaughtered thousands? 

Instead, that morning he had lessons with the maester – letters, mostly, since the man said that he was surprisingly good with numbers, which Gendry suspected might be a result of Master Mott’s drilling on the subject – and after endless hours of sitting, bent over an old and dry piece of parchment all about horseshoes, fighting his way through it one letter and one word at a time, finally, something like an idea popped into his head. 

If someone had written so much about _horseshoes_ of all things, why shouldn’t have someone else written about wargs as well? 

Surely, they were a more interesting topic? 

And hadn’t Arya said that some of the things she’d told him when they’d still been trading stories every night had been from books she’d read back in Winterfell? 

Determined – and Gendry could be stubborn, he knew that, he’d not made his helmet in a bull’s shape for nothing – he redoubled his efforts to learn. Maester Vyman had showed him his library when he’d first come in. Gendry had never been in one before, but it turned out that a library was a whole room full of books and loose pages. He hadn’t really seen the point of it, then, but now … 

_There might_ , he concluded, _be something useful in there, after all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so, here it is. The great big Gendry chapter (though I think Catelyn 1 was longer than this one). Took me some while. Sorry 'bout that.
> 
> Anyways, I now have a basic outline for this part of the story (which will probably be the last, too). I've even got a first draft of chapter two (that's new for me. I had the last parts all written out before I published anything at all and only edited and partly rewrote them).
> 
> I really hope I've got Gendry's voice right. It has, after all, been some while since I wrote something for him. You might also have noticed that he now refers to King's Landing simply as _the City_. I got that from ancient Rome, where (anywhere in the empire) you could just use _urbs_ (that is, _the city_ ), and if you didn't specify _which_ city, you'd be talking about Rome itself. Westeros isn't nearly as centralized as ancient Rome was, of course, but I thought that for someone who's lived his whole live in the capital and never really left it before, it might be appropriate.
> 
> Also, I'm not sure about the whole Ser-Brynden-doesn't-normally-take-on-squires-thing. I just made that up, although I did take a look on his wiki page, where no squire was mentioned, and went through some likely candidates -- most importantly, his nephew Ser Edmure -- and since neither of them every where squires of his, I thought it might be close enough to canon to just go with it. I don't know all that much about him and his view on the world, so I just sort of made something up that seemed likely to me.


	2. Robb

Robb awoke early in the morning, and found his wife beside him. For a part of him that still felt all new and unused to, something so very wonderful and exciting, and partly it was already so familiar that he couldn’t imagine how he’d ever lived without Jeyne beside him in the mornings. 

He sent a silent prayer of thanks to the Old Gods, who’d let him be born in the North, where husband and wife shared a chamber, not like in the south where they might live in completely different parts of a castle. 

Looking over to her, Robb relished the few moments he still had left to just lie there and be happy, before he’d have to stand up and get to work, the last few moments of every morning he could pretend – just for a moment – would last forever. 

Especially so today, when even these mornings wouldn’t last all that much longer. He hadn’t even told her that yet. It wasn’t that he hadn’t tried, he _had_ , but just couldn’t bring himself to get the words out of his mouth. Maybe he should stay until she woke up and tell her then — but then this morning would end up being more miserable than it already was, and in any case she’d know by midday so there wasn’t really much of a point to it. That didn’t stop him from feeling guilty. 

Especially when somewhere in his mind he entertained entirely different ideas on what to do in the mornings, even when he knew that wouldn’t do. He’d done his duty as a husband — he took a moment to reflect on that, his _duty_ , which, from people like Maester Luwin and his father, had always seemed to be a necessary task to be done and not the sweetest thing there was and ever could be — before they’d went to sleep last night, and Jeyne had taken her mother’s fertility potion again as well. To do any more would have been bound to be excessive, surely? 

He wondered what would happen when she’d actually give him a child. How long would it be before they couldn’t … 

What would they do then? 

_Get these thoughts out of your mind_ , he told himself, _you’re the King in the North, not a_ _thrice-damned poet going on about his lady love, not even inside your head. That one poet_ _downstairs composing songs about your love is already quite enough, you really aren’t in need_ _of another._

With a sigh, he stood up – carefully, so as to not wake Jeyne – clothed himself, and tried to be awake. 

He wasn’t sure if he succeeded, but then, last night had certainly been sweet enough to warrant a bit of sleepiness? 

_Not likely that Edmure will care, though._

That man was now constantly babbeling about how he’d insulted the Freys, and although this showed that the man _did_ have more insight than Robb had been able to discern from the men’s plans, talk of old Walder Frey wasn’t something he entirely appreciated when his head was all full of memories from last night … 

Somewhere some part of him insisted that he really shouldn’t dwell on that any longer. Some other part told him that then he’d have to dwell on something else, like the continuing lack of news from Winterfell and Ser Rodrick. Finally, he just tried to ignore all of it. 

There were, after all, enough other problems at hand. Making his way through his study and down the stairs, Robb wondered what to do with the man. The smallfolk inside the walls had been a good idea, he’d decided, and better than what most southron lords would’ve done, but that didn’t change the fact that Riverrun couldn’t afford to feed them all for very long. 

And as for his uncle’s strategic blunders … 

Half of him had wanted to send a raven bearing his thanks to Jon Snow the instant his lady mother had told him how Arya had come to know of battle-plans, though he’d been somewhat conflicted on exactly what to put in it — should he mention that she’d also killed Tywin Lannister? —, and in the end he’d never send one at all. 

Also, of course, there was the matter of that boy Gendry. Robb wondered how a man who cared about his smallfolk enough to grant them such a protection could throw a clearly innocent boy into a dungeon, even more so when there was a letter from the supposed victim clearly stating that the boy was not to be punished and instead to receive a knight’s education. 

Especially if said boy was unable to read, although Robb supposed that would change soon enough. Arya herself had asked for him to be educated as a knight, after all, and Robb certainly wouldn’t have denied her that wish, although he _had_ been somewhat surprised when Ser Brynden had offered to do it. 

His great-uncle certainly wasn’t known for taking on squires. 

Ser — Robb felt someone should remind the man more that he wasn’t quite a lord yet — Edmure’s manservant told him that his master was still asleep, so Robb left orders to send for him once he’d woken; in the meanwhile, he’d be in the library. 

Grey Wind was in the kennel for now, but Robb wondered if that was enough. Ever since his direwolf had begun to scare his wife’s family he’d become somewhat suspicious of the beast, and Arya’s tale — though related to him through his mother — had certainly done little to ease his fear. 

Riverrun’s library was small, not half as many books as there’d been in Winterfell – and even that, Maester Luwin had called _small_ , though he and Jon had both agreed that it had been a truly extraordinary amount, and even after half of it had burnt Robb wouldn’t exactly call it _small_ – and he slowly worked his way through it, in search of every little half-sentence about direwolves he could find, which, he’d been disappointed to learn, was almost insultingly little. 

Mostly, that was the reason he rose so early; with all that he had to do, there wasn’t time enough to do this sometime during the day. 

Maester Vyman was always glad to admit him — the man rose even earlier than his king did, claiming that in his old days, he needed less sleep that he’d used to — and sometimes even pointed out interesting volumes that Robb might consult, though Vyman would readily admit that he lacked a thorough understanding of the subject of direwolves, or even normal wolves, and that such matters were thought of little interest unworthy of study at the Citadel. 

After some days of searching, Robb knew this was more than true. More or less, he’d given up hope on ever finding anything that wasn’t a tale. Most of them were quite nice, some reminded him of the sort of story that Old Nan might tell, tales of evil wargs and kinslaying monsters. And even without Maester Luwin’s teachings and Maester Vyman’s words of caution that wasn’t something he’d bet his direwolf’s live on. 

“Ah, your Grace! It seems you’re becoming something of a regular, if you’ll forgive the remark. I presume you wish to visit this castle’s humble library once again?” 

“If there have been no ravens today, yes.” 

“Not one, your Grace. Not a single one since Lord Bolton’s old relating of rumours, I’m afraid. Still, a day so young that it’s still black outside, much might still happen. Ravens travel seldom in the dark, your Grace; to receive one at this hour it almost unheard-of. Maybe later today, your Grace.” 

“Maybe”, Robb agreed. 

“I’ll see that you are at once informed should anything arrive, of course”, the maester assured him. Then, while both were walking down the final set of stairs, outside and through the yard towards the Library Tower — that was Robb’s name for it, in fact, he felt that a castle ought to have a Library Tower, as Winterfell did — he added, “You’ll find you have company today, your Grace”, said the Maester, while fishing for the right key to open the heavy iron-bolted door. 

“Company?” 

Robb couldn’t imagine who else would be up and reading at this hour. For a moment his mind conjured the image of Arya, on the same search as he was himself, up this early so no one would notice her. 

It didn’t seem to him that she liked to be noticed since he’d come back; in fact, he hadn’t seen her at all after she’d fled out of that meeting-chamber. 

He longed to speak with her again, but didn’t want to intrude on her, either, not when her maid claimed that Arya wouldn’t receive anyone, not even a king. 

“The young man you’ve ordered me to teach”, Vyman was saying, ripping him back in front of the library door and out of his thoughts, “it’s a rare and admirable trait in the young these days, I’ve found, to be studying tirelessly so early in the morning. He wasn’t the most attentive of my students at first, but now that he’s learnt at least a basic array of skills, I’d be willing to say that he’s been hooked up by it and now spends almost every of his free hours reading. Perhaps you ought to have sent him to the Citadel in place of the Blackfish.” 

_Arya’s friend, that bastard Gendry? What’s he doing here, he can’t even read – or at least_ _not properly, not yet._

He wasn’t sure when he’d actually been able to read, but it had certainly not been less than a fortnight after Maester Luwin had started to teach him. Certainly much, _much_ longer until he’d started to read on his own when no one was forcing him to. And while it might be that Maester Luwin simply wasn’t an adept teacher, that, to Robb, seemed more than simply absurd. 

_Seems the bastard really_ has _been hooked by something._

Or the old man had just confused him with some other boy. Given the maester’s age, Robb almost thought that credible. 

But inside, at the single little table, bent over a volume that Robb recognized — he’d consulted it himself, on his search — he did indeed find Gendry. There was only the one table, though, so Robb resolved to seat himself across from him. 

The boy evidently still found it hard to read, struggling through almost every word, sometimes reading them aloud until they made sense to him, and he was so absorbed by his task that at first he didn’t notice that someone else had seated himself at the table. 

“Your Grace”, he started when he did and recognized who it was, “I … Maybe I should better leave –” 

“Please, don’t be disturbed. _A Collection of curious northern tales, of such matters_ _as greenseers and wargs, with notes upon their untruths and their fallacies, by_ _Maester Gerhald._ ” – the boy looked more than a bit impressed that Robb could read the title, given that it was upside-down for him – “I’ve read it, though I can’t say that I’ve enjoyed it, or found it to be of any use. I wonder if there’s ever been a Maester of Winterfell who’s felt more disdain for the people of his lord.” 

“Tha’ is … I just thought I might find somethin’ in there, is all, your grace.” 

Robb wondered what anyone could hope to find in an article about fallacies. Then again, the boy _was_ lowborn, maybe he just didn’t know what “fallacy” even meant. 

Unsurprisingly, he found as little in his own choice of reading – today, it was _An Account_ _of a Ranger of the Night’s Watch Concerning The Habits And Beliefs of The Wildlings_ – as he’d found in the days before, and when finally Edmure’s messenger came for him he couldn’t say that he was in the most agreeable mood. 

And the prospect of talking to his uncle, and what they’d be talking about – something Robb knew was necessary, but not actually entirely sure about – did little to raise his spirits. But on his way he came across Jeyne coming by in the opposite direction, down the staircase from their chambers. 

“Your Grace, I almost feared you had abandoned me!”, she told him in the most playful of voices. 

“Oh, I could never leave you, believe me.” Thinking on what he would announce later this day, though, he quickly added “Not for long, anyways.” 

The two shared a quick kiss and some complaints about his uncle before they had to part ways again – Robb to Edmure’s study, she to her mother’s chamber. Robb didn’t ask why, though he suspected it might be because of the rather-unsuccessful potion. 

Still, when he finally reached the lord’s study he felt much better than he had before, even with the unsolved problem of Grey Wind still wandering through his mind, and the anxiety of what else today might bring, and how his ideas about it would work out. 

“Your Grace” – Robb was glad Edmure had stopped calling him _nephew_ in these meetings. Not that he didn’t like the man to be his uncle, but such things shouldn’t be of concern when they met as lord and king, if anyone had asked him. 

“My lord.” 

“You wanted to talk to me?” 

“I did. I do not expect that there has been any word from Winterfell?” 

It hadn’t been long since he’d asked Maester Vyman, but still. Even a king was allowed to entertain vain hopes. 

For a moment the man looked as if he was pitying him, and Robb realized how much he sounded like a boy longing for his home. 

“Last that we heard, Ser Rodrick was at Castle Cerwyn, a day’s ride from Winterfell.” 

_Yes, thank you, I know how far it is from Winterfell to Castle Cerwyn_. The man’s capacity to be annoying was truly amazing at times. 

“I expect it was to much to hope for that the siege be over in a few days.” 

“Maybe the raven got lost or delayed.” 

“Maybe. But be that as it may, I do not intend to wait for it much longer.” 

“Your Grace?” 

“Whether King’s Landing has fallen or not, whoever now sits the Iron Throne will first have to sort out the confusion that follows in the wake of a siege. If it’s indeed Stannis who has won he’ll have a hard time gaining the Tyrells, and if it’s Joffrey … without Lord Tywin, he truly isn’t much of a threat. Still, the wheel turns quickly sometimes and he might still surprise us, and I do not expect to have much time without a direct threat from the south. But I mean to use that time the best I can, to take back Moat Cailin, and reopen the road to the north. Without it, my kingdom lies in shreds.” 

“Of course your Grace.” 

“Further, I have decided to appoint Ser Brynden, your uncle, to the newly-created position of Warden of the Rivers. As such he will have the authority to command all our forces south of the neck, unless I directly order otherwise.” 

There was a short hint of pain on his uncle’s face; Robb knew that he’d made Ser Brynden almost Lord of Riverrun with this, and more or less publicly stated that he didn’t trust Ser Edmure’s capability as a commander in war. 

“I will take all northmen in Riverrun and ride in two day’s time, towards the Twins, where I’ll meet up with Lord Bolton and his own forces.” 

“Does your Grace truly consider that to be wise?” 

“Walder Frey is a petty old man, but he wouldn’t dare to threaten his king.” 

_Not while he knows as little of who holds King’s Landing as I do._ That was the main reason Robb wanted to act. Even if by the time they were at the Twins a winner had established himself, there would’ve been little time for any secret negotiations between him and old Lord Frey. 

“Maybe.” 

_Yes, maybe._ Robb certainly didn’t look foreward to that meeting, and was more anxious about it than he let on. 

The rest of the day was largely lost to preparations, although he did find some time to be with Jeyne – who was, unfortunately though understandably, angry at him for _actually_ leaving him, although he promised he’d be with here again as soon as he could. 

That afternoon he announced his decision in the Great Hall to his lords – he’d had no worries about having trouble there, and indeed, they cheered him all, led by the Greatjon’s booming voice, and if there was any dissent in the riverlord’s faction with Ser Brynden’s new title and powers, they were quickly drowned out – to then first hold a discussion of possible strategies in his study and later receive anyone who after that still had questions. 

In between, when he had a moment to him alone, Robb looked own through the window into the yard, watching the boys there practising. Rollam Westerling, now his squire, was easily spotted — he’d chosen him to remain at Riverrun, together with his sister Elayna, so Jeyne would have some familiar faces remaining with her — as well as his older brother Ser Raynald, who’d come with him. He could spot Ser Brynden there as well — he’d had a lengthy talk with him about his new position just an hour earlier — training Gendry. It occurred to him that he was still thinking of him as a boy, though he truly wasn’t much younger than himself, and, from the look of him, not as naïve as he’d been just a year ago. 

The next two days passed in something of a blur — preparations, talks to his men, working out plans and strategies with his lords and Maege Mormont, who’d seen more battles than most of the men and would endlessly tease them all about it. He also spoke to his mother about what he intended to do. 

She, too, counselled him to be careful around Walder Frey, and to give a formal, public apology; he, in turn, instructed her that in the event that Stannis had actually won she should ride to meet him again. After all, the man _had_ promised to release Sansa should he capture her alive, and while Robb almost didn’t dare to hope, maybe there was some little chance of piece there as well. 

Finally, on his last evening in Riverrun, he made his way to Arya’s chamber, but was told that she still wouldn’t receive anyone. He had half a mind to ignore it and go in anyways – he was the king, after all – but instead he resolved to leave her alone if she truly wanted to. 

Instead he went back to his study, took parchment and ink and wrote a lengthy letter to her, and while he was at it, he finally wrote one to Jon as well. 

He left the first with Arya’s maid – it seemed to him that all the poor girl ever did was to stand around in the corridor in front of Arya’s chamber door – to be given to her at the first moment she didn’t seem likely to just ignore it, and the second one with the maester, together with another, more formal letter to Lord Bolton containing orders to leave Harrenhal – it would be held by a garrison appointed by Ser Brynden, though the man himself would remain in Riverrun for now – and meet him at the twins. 

Lastly, he also wrote one to Winterfell, in case it wasn’t in Theon Greyjoy’s hands anymore, stating his intention to go north in terms so obscure – for all that it had been fruitless, his searching in the library _had_ equipped him with some words he was sure no one had used for a hundred years or more – that he hoped only Maester Luwin would be able to figure out what they actually meant. 

And then in what had seemed to him like no time at all he had to bid Jeyne farewell – though he suspected that neither of them would be likely to forget their last night together any time soon – face his uncle one last time, and say goodbye to his mother before riding through the eastern gate of Riverrun with his guards and knights around him, and be on his way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uff, okay, so, Robb POV chapter.
> 
> Wasn't really expecting that. Hope I did well. Hope it worked. Fell behind in my writing, might not be home next week, so you might have to do a week without me (and what a tragic loss that would be …).
> 
> Hope I didn't blunder the politics. Am slightly frustrated of that whole topic at the moment, and I'm not good at it in the best of times (which is probably why I'm studying informatics. Also, watching lots and lots of Doctor Who. Am still trying to figure out whether Arya's the Doctor or Amy. Probably neither. Actually, should be doing homework right now. Ah well)
> 
> Anyways, I hope it's a better chapter than it seems to be to me.
> 
> Hope you liked it. Glad that so many of you are still here, after almost half a year and gave kudos to the last chapter (and glad that there are new people with this as well, of course).
> 
> Thanks for putting up with my ramblings.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> They'll always be welcome.
> 
> (Also, just found a typo in the title. Now there's a pleasant surprise … ahhh, that is so awkward. Sorry for all that were confused, and thanks to all who saw a story with a typo in its title and clicked on it anyways)


	3. Catelyn

There, on the table beside her father’s bed, lay the latter that called her away again. At last, Lord Bolton had sent word in his last letter before he left Harrenhal, word of Stannis’s victory. 

And as Robb had ordered, she’d have leave her home yet again, and treat with the man who could call demons on his enemies. She wondered if it was even of any use; a man of such power might just as well ignore any argument set in front of him, any plead and any request. There was no need for him to hold his word, nothing holding him to his promises. 

In a very real sense, she felt like she thought a man might do, riding out and into battle. When she’d last been an envoy, she’d been sure of some basic things; most of all, she knew that no one would kill her deliberately, because no man would dare to kill an envoy, or else he’d forever be branded as untrustworthy. 

Her Ned had called Stannis a good man, honest, honourable, and true to his word. 

She hoped to all the Seven that he’d been right. 

Otherwise, there was as much certainty of her coming back as with Robb and a battlefield. Maybe less, even. 

“Watch for me, father”, she whispered, taking one last look at him — he grew weaker by the hour, and Catelyn had little doubt this would be the final time she’d see him alive — before she left her father’s solar. 

Down the stairs and halfway through the corridor she met her uncle again. 

“How is he?”, Ser Brynden asked. It wasn’t hard to guess where she’d been, she supposed. 

“Dying”, Catelyn told him. 

“Naah, I wouldn’t say that. Your father’s a fiercer man than I’ve ever been, he’ll surprise us yet, you know how he is.” 

She knew he was trying to make her smile, and it almost worked, too. But only almost, and not quite. 

“So, you are on your way to Stannis?” 

Catelyn hesitated for barely a moment, then sighed. 

“Soon enough.” 

Fear was apparently written clearly on her face; at least, her uncle had noticed it easily. 

“There’s not more to fear than when you rode to Renly. Stannis is a good man, and just.” 

“So they keep telling me. I … you know what I’ve told you, and I cannot forget it, not for a moment.” 

He was the only one she’d trusted enough to tell how Renly really had died; after they’d both heard the wolves calling, it had seemed less like a fantastic and outlandish tale than it had before. And to his credit, her uncle didn’t brush her aside, though she wasn’t quite sure if he’d believed it, either. 

“I feel like I’m getting old, Cat. In my days, wars were fought with swords, not sorcery. But now … maybe you should ask your daughter for help,” he quipped, jokingly though he soon noticed it hadn’t the desired effect. Catelyn wondered what had changed; not a fortnight ago he’d still had the miraculous power to make her laugh, no matter how dire things seemed. 

“It’s been a week since I’ve last seen Arya.” 

_Arya_ , she thought, _that has changed. I cannot laugh while my daughter shuts herself away_ _from the world._

“You should visit her, I’d think, before you’re gone again.” 

_Yes, I know that. But now, to come to her only to say that I’m going away again_ _… I_ _should have seen her before._

Still … with no word from Winterfell, and not a clue about whose side the Tyrells were on now, with so much left hanging in the air, with only the Gods knowing on which strings and how they’d swing … 

Given all that, Catelyn resolved to tie up some loose ends, some things she should’ve done before. There was still an hour or two left before she had to ride through the gate. Brienne was outside together with Hallis Mollen, organizing the escort and their horses, so there wasn’t much for her to do, except sometimes to wonder what the girl might do once they reached King’s Landing, but of course she couldn’t deny her the journey; she’d sworn an oath to that, after all. 

So she bade her uncle farewell, turned on the spot, and started back towards the living chambers, towards Arya’s. Her maid stood in front of the door, as bored and resigned as ever, clearly longing to be anywhere else, doing anything else than there. Catelyn felt sorry for the girl; as much as she was aware, the girl — Bertha was her name — did nothing but to stand there, since almost a fortnight, except to bring Arya food, seeing as steadfastly refused to leave her chambers. 

“How is she?” 

“I’m afraid I don’t really know, m’lady. These days, all I’m doing is to guard this door and bring the lady her meals three times a day. Says she doesn’t need me, or want me, for anything else, m’lady,” the girl told her. 

“I assume she’s never left her chambers?” 

“No m’lady.” 

“Has anyone come to see her?” 

“The King’s left a letter for her the day he rode out. I’m not sure if she’s read it yet, though, but I gave it to her the morning afterwards, together with her breakfast. But apart from that there’s been no one, and she told me not to let anyone in, anyway. M’lady.” 

The way the girl almost forgot the courtesy made her think of why she’d chosen her; because Utherydes Wayn had told her she wasn’t one of the overly-polite ones, rather the opposite. 

_If Arya ever actually spoke to her, I’d think they’d like each other._

But of course Arya hadn’t said more than a few words to anyone since she’d come back. And most of the time, these words amounted to different ways of saying _leave me_ _alone_. 

“You can go in, of course. M’lady.” 

Catelyn considered something for a moment, then replied: 

“Should her friend ever come to call upon her, let him in, regardless what she’s told you.” 

“Her friend? I don’t think I’ve met him before, m’lady.” 

_No, I only got you for her once she was away. Maybe that was too late. I’m always late,_ _these days, it seems._

“A lowborn boy, with black hair and blue eyes, a blacksmith, though now a squire. His name’s Gendry.” 

The girl nodded, and promised to let him in should he ever actually turn up, though Catelyn was surprised he hadn’t tried yet. 

Finally, she stepped through the door. She ignored the mess in the first room, quickly stepping through to her daughter’s bedchamber, although she found the door to be barred. She found that irritating, because she couldn’t remember that door having a bar, and she knew Riverrun as well as any woman could. 

_Maybe_

“Go away,” came Arya’s voice. 

“Arya! You _will_ let me in.” 

In the end, she did get inside (to find that Arya had build a makeshift bar made of a heavy oak-wood chair), but she didn’t stay there for very long. Somehow, Arya had managed to chase her away, even though she’d promised herself not to be easily thrown off, not this time. 

It was her fault, though, in all likelihood. And, in hindsight, mentioning to someone who could control beasts that, according to rumour, these same beast were rampaging through the land leaving a trail of destruction and half-eaten bodies obviously hadn’t been the best of her ideas, so she could scarcely fault Arya for that. Still, she’d hoped … with a jolt she realized she hadn’t actually been sure what she’d been hoping for. Not pleasant conversation, that would’ve been impossible, surely. But maybe just a few honest sentences exchanged, and word of farewell. 

At least she could now be sure that this hadn’t been Arya’s doing, could hate herself for even considering that possibility, even if just for a moment while being sure that it wasn’t correct. 

Still, it took her a moment to regain her self-control, no matter how practised it had become over the years. 

Then she quietly went out and down the corridor, making her way towards the stables. 

Crossing the courtyard she saw Gendry, Arya’s friend. 

_I’ve done wrong to him, too_ , she thought, wondering if maybe she should stop for a moment and tell him that. But as soon as he saw here the boy shied away, and Catelyn was left alone again, or as alone as one can be in a castle that feels more like a small town, with children running and playing all around her. 

She remembered a girl baking mud pies, and suddenly dearly wished that she could’ve stayed there. 

Of course that thought didn’t help her, either, so she tried to drown it out. 

Hallis Mollen appeared with her horse, along with Brienne and the rest of the guards Robb had set aside for her; and her brother came into the yard, too, she saw. 

Mounting the horse, she said her farewell to her brother and a final one to the castle itself, then gave a wink up towards her father’s solar, though of course he wouldn’t be able to see that. 

At last she had to ride out, towards a man who could call forth demons. 

_Watch for me, father._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For all that it's short, this was a tough one. Partly 'cause it's a Catelyn chapter, but also because I didn't realize I needed it until a day ago, or else the next one wouldn't work as I want it to work (which also means that the next chapter's halfway done).
> 
> I really hope I'm getting the politics even halfway-believable. In this part I'd wanted them to paint a backdrop of sorts, but they just sort of fell out of my head and I keep forgetting what I wanted to do and how to add that in. Still, I hope things'll work out (and I hope that something for the parley will pop into my head …).
> 
> What do you say? Thoughts?
> 
> Hope it was an enjoyable (even if short) read.
> 
> (the next one will be longer, I promise)


	4. Gendry 2

Gendry stared at the boy in disbelief. What was he doing _here_? Not that he was strictly against meeting him again, it was just that it had seemed exceedingly unlikely. But across the table, in Riverrun’s great hall, did indeed sit Hot Pie. In fact, he’d just placed himself of the bench there as if it was the most normal thing in the world, if a bit nervous-looking. Gendry found himself utterly stunned. 

_Here we are again, first time we meet in a month and I already look the idiot._

“Yeah, jus’ thought tha’ perhaps I should say hello”, Hot Pie said. 

There was silence for a moment, of that particular uncomfortable sort that Gendry had come to know much to well for his liking; the kind when neither really knew what to say next, or why they were even talking in the first place. 

“All righ’, maybe … not? Jus’ thought that, ya know, —” 

“No, it’s fine. Glad to see you’re well. I just … didn’t expect to see you again, is all.” 

“Wasn’t thinking that neither, m’self.” 

_Maybe I should ask what happened_ , Gendry thought, but then, he didn’t really have to. Arya might’ve used to call him stupid, but even _he_ couldn’t miss the state Hot Pie was in. Clothes torn, dirt all over his face, a missing shoe, lacking the general air of contentedness he’d had when they’d said farewell, where he’d had flour all over his face instead. The boy looked utterly miserable; Gendry just hadn’t noticed at first, when he’d been to stunned by his mere presence. 

_Weasel is missing, too._ He didn’t really want to think on what that meant. If Hot Pie ran from the inn and left her behind, there wasn’t much ambiguity as to what must have happened there. 

_Better not to mention that, though. He’s looking depressed enough already, no need to add_ _to that._

So instead, Gendry asked, keeping his voice as normal as he could manage: “So, you’re all right then? I mean, you’re a cook, any chance of work here?” 

Hot Pie took a look at the meagre dish in front of him — largely consisting of something like broth, with some stuff in it that Gendry didn’t really care about — some kind of wheat maybe, swollen from the soup — he’d just wolved his bits it all down after a day’s worth of horse-riding without paying much attention to what he actually ate. 

“Ya’ know, they _could_ use some improvement with tha’ stuff. Yeah, I know, all this might be under siege soon an’ all o’ tha’, but ’tis not hard or expensive or anythin’. But no, don’t have any work. Not yet at least.” 

Dropping his voice a bit, Hot Pie admitted he hadn’t yet worked up the courage to ask the steward. 

Gendry was about to tell him it wasn’t hard to convince the man you were worth something, in fact, it had been surprisingly easy when — _Oh. That was Arya’s doing, most_ _like._

Hot Pie didn’t seem to mind the lack of an answer; in fact, he’d happily continued working on some of the more chewy bits in today’s stew. 

“Anyway, what’re you doin’ here, now? Last I saw you an’ Arry were just tryin’ to get here like mad. Tho’ I suppose I did tha’, too, just somewhat later than ya two.” 

“Ahm, well …” _How do I tell him that I’m the Blackfish’s squire without him_ _thinking I’m just lying?_ “Master Rymond — he’s the smith here — took me on for a while.” 

He had to stop there, any more and he’d just gotten tangled in his own words. If Hot Pie noticed, he just went smoothly over it. 

“And Arry? He found anything to do?” 

Instinctively, he turned to look at the hight table, with the vain hope that maybe today she’d be there, but of course she wasn’t. 

“Wha’? Where’re ya looking at? Anyway, what abou’ him?” 

_Him._ Gendry hadn’t even remembered that Hot Pie had never learnt who _Arry_ truly was. 

_All you Seven_ , he thought, _why do you always have to throw me into these impossible_ _conversations?_

Maybe he should try praying to a heart tree. If they let Arya kill Lord Tywin, surely they’d have the power to keep him away from his own awkwardness? 

In any event, the next hour found him worn out, embarrassed, somewhat confused and definitely _not_ hiding in his chamber. 

Although, to Gendry’s surprise it had turned out that Hot Pie _had_ noticed something off about Arya, though he’d just figured she was on the run from something — murder, perhaps — or just possibly oppressing Gendry to go with her because there was no other sane reason for anyone to go into a castle that might be under siege. 

Also, he’d promised him to ask Arya about doing whatever it was she’d done to get him work again to get Hot Pie a place in the kitchen. 

It had been much too late when he’d realized he hadn’t spoken with her for at least a fortnight, ever since she’d returned to Riverrun. 

_Ever since the wolves came howling._

He’d have thought that would be less in his head after more than a week, or maybe disappear entirely, but somehow it hadn’t. Probably it had stopped distracting him quite as much, or wasn’t happening as often now as he’d been used to, but Gendry didn’t really notice if that was the case. He still woke up almost every second night, panicking. 

And anyway, after hearing her giving that speech … he knew she hadn’t lied when she’d spoken about killing all these people. Even before King Robb had proclaimed that Lord Tywin was slain in battle — someone somewhere had conjured a tale about unrest in his ranks, one or two bloody changes in his army’s command chain, Gendry hadn’t really cared — there had been little doubt of it. Arya might be good at wearing masks, but he’d learnt how to notice them, and how to guess what lay beneath. 

And he _had_ wanted to visit her, truly, it was just … every time he thought about actually doing it (which, to his shame, wasn’t as often as it should’ve been) he’d start to wonder what she was like now, especially after what the Blackfish had told him about war and fighting. Most times, it had just been easier to tell himself _tomorrow_ , and then on the morrow maybe Ser Brynden would continue his lessons, or maybe Maester Vyman, and then of course he’d often be in the library, desperately trying to figure out what he might find should he actually go into her chamber. Not that it helped much; he just managed to read half a page an hour, and he had only an hour a day to spare. Maester Vyman might claim the library was small, but it definitely wasn’t _that_ small. 

Other times, he just convinced himself she wouldn’t want to see him, anyways. 

Although sometimes, before falling asleep, he’d want to tell her a story, or listen to one of hers, but normally he was to tired to stand up again, and anyways no one would let a bastard visit a lady’s chamber at night. And once he woke again in the morning, like as not all of that would be gone from his mind, and so somehow he’d managed to never actually visit as much as her chamber door. 

But now here he was, maybe a bit early in the morning — he’d given up on finding anything in the library, with his meagre speed at reading — and wondering if maybe she was still asleep, if maybe it would be better to wait … 

_No_ , he told himself, _You’ve been finding enough excuses. Just go there, ask that maid in_ _front of the door if she’s awake, that’s not too much to expect._

And anyway, that young woman there looked so bored it would’ve been cruel to vanish again without saying a word to her. 

“Ah, pardon me, I just wanted to ask if A- … if m’lady … that is, if she might see me.” 

The girl managed to give a truly impressive impression of utter disinterest, but began looking him up and down. 

“Black hair, blue eyes, smith, apparently, … ah, wait, you’re the one who’s squiring for the Blackfish, aren’t you?” 

“Yes. I’m Gendry.” 

“Pleasure to meet you. Wanted to see who you are for a while now, since Marya told me about it, but since I’m always just standing around here … Well, anyway, the Lady said you’re allowed in.” 

With that, she opened the door. 

_Well that was easy._

“Now come on, go in, you know how heavy that door is?” 

Gendry looked up at her, her thin form struggling with the weight of the wood and the beaten-out metal straps that made up part of the lock mechanism. He’d forged these things more than once, and they truly made for an impressively heavy door. 

“Ah, sorry.” 

Stepped inside, he stopped short after a moment, blinked, and tried to recognize the room. He knew her chambers well, of course, but suddenly everything seemed wrong and alien there. For one, Arya wasn’t in the front chamber, as she usually was during the day. But that wasn’t all, far from it. That little table where she’d once made him drink sour wine was missing its chairs, and everything seemed as if it had been abandoned for some while. When he’d been here, before, there’d always been scrolls lying around with half-written letters to her brother on them, or some drawings of Princess Nymeria (mostly paintings, though sometimes she’d draw one herself, too), and on occasion there’d be some wooden training (or, just once, a real) battleaxe or sword that she’d snatched from the training yard lying around. He remembered that she’d once challenged him to a fight in this chamber. There was something of a dent in the wall, just right to the door, to prove it. 

Looking around, the only thing that Gendry could find that was definitely hers was Needle, lying in a corner as if cast away. It was bent, too, and something told him it had been thrown at a wall. Picking it up he tried to clean the little sword best as he could with his sleeve, before thinking that maybe he should get this down to the forge and sharpen it somewhat before he remembered what he was here for. 

The door leading to the adjourning chamber where she slept was closed, but not barred. For a moment he considered just storming in, but knocked instead. 

“Go away”, came a voice, just barely recognizable as Arya’s. 

What to do now? _Not going, that’s for sure. Although_ _…_

“Pardon me, _m’lady_ , I’ll leave you to your solitude.” 

He’d picked that phrase up from the Blackfish, who used it whenever someone wasn’t happy to see him, although Gendry had probably emphasized the _m’lady_ part more. 

Half he’d hoped to hear her chuckle, but of course that didn’t happen. 

“Go away, Gendry.” 

If there was one thing that she’d surprised him with in her answer, it was more the lack of a _don’t call me that_ than telling him to go away. 

“Your maid let me in.” 

“Obviously.” 

Gendry hoped she’d just rolled her eyes the same way she usually did. 

“Just … go away. _Please,_ Gendry.” 

Slowly, Gendry began to feel uncomfortable. When exactly had been the last time he’d heard her _beg?_

“You all right in there?” 

There was a longer pause than he’d expected from her, then: 

“As much as I’d be anywhere else.” 

_I’m as fine as I’d be anywhere else._ Gendry was all to familiar with that thought. He’d made himself think it for almost a week. A week he’d spent starving in the City’s streets, living in terror of every flap of a golden cloak his eyes would catch, after a man had caught him stealing and threatened to have him in a black cell. 

_If Arya’s in any way similar to me, she’s truly_ not _fine right now._

“Arya?”, he called, “I’m coming in.” 

“Yes. No, _what? No!_ ” 

The door had always been easy to open, at least for him — Arya had disagreed vehemently — and although now it felt quite a lot harder, Gendry _had_ been hammering on an anvil everyday for half his life. The wood gave a sort of screeching noise in protest before sliding open, if only a little. Reaching his hand through, he found the missing chair barring it from the other side and pushed it away. 

Finally, it fell open. Behind was a mess, as if someone hadn’t really cared for the room in quite some while. Gendry felt he shouldn’t be so surprised; Arya certainly wouldn’t clean it up, and her maid likely hadn’t put a toe inside the chamber ever since her lady was back. 

Stepping past the chair over the sadly-looking remains of what might once have been a truly lovely piece of meat — suddenly he realized he hadn’t broken his fast yet — he came around the half-wall that hid Arya’s bed from the door. 

“Ah, yes, I can see how _all right_ you are, m’lady.” 

She lay there, looking sickly with much paler skin than he remembered, looking sort-of like some of the children he’d seen in the City, the ones that lived in the streets without any food for a week, slowly starving away. 

Also, it looked as if she’d tried to bind herself to the bed. There was a string — probably from all that stuff that ladies had to have around for needlework, she’d complained about having to keep it more than once — around her left wrist connecting her with framework that the mattress lay on, and something along her right as well, though it didn’t look like she’d quite managed to finish it. 

_Well, I imagine it’s quite hard to bind your left arm to something when you can’t use your_ _right._

Beside her, on the little bed-side table lay a piece of parchment which had her scrawling all over it, with things crossed out and corrected and crossed out again. 

“I tried to write a letter”, she told him, obviously following his eyes, “to Jon, or maybe Robb. It didn’t work, I can’t really write with my right, and I didn’t know what to put in it anyways.” 

Kneeling down beside her, he took a longer look at it. Even now he wasn’t able to make out its meaning, used as he was to the pretty writing in the library’s books, but he _was_ fairly certain that some of the letters where the wrong way round. 

“Someone’s teaching you how to read?” 

He gave a nod, not sure what else to do. 

“Good.” 

It took him a moment before he could speak again, to take all this in. His had was hurting, and if Arya had been normal, she’d have probably said that he had his “thinking-face” on. 

“Arya, what is all that?”, he asked her, pointing to the messy bound she’d made around her arm. 

“I didn’t want to hurt anyone, not again. Isn’t that what you do, with monsters? Chaining them up?” 

If there was one thing that frightened him it was more the tone of her voice — sincere, as sure of herself as she’d ever been, but also meek, and resigned — than what she _could_ do to hurt someone. 

“So you’ve been here all this time?” 

“Mostly, yes. There’s a chamber pot beneath the bed, I can get it out with my right. And seeing as I am a _princess_ ” — she made it more sound more like a snort than a word — “they bring me food in here, too. But I can look out of the window. I watched you there, down in the yard, practising.” 

That brought a smile to his face, and he almost thought he could see her share it, but wasn’t quite sure of it. Then he remembered that she’d tried to chain herself up, and stopped. 

“Why? Arya. I know you, you wouldn’t hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it.” 

There was silence again, a bitter, cold and sad one. When she spoke again, she’d managed the seemingly impossible and made her voice go even weaker. 

“I’m not sure of that anymore, Gendry. When I was there, in the battle … I rode on Nymeria, you know, with Needle in my hand, and —” 

“I found it in the chamber outside,” he interrupted her, before she had to say any more. 

“Yes. I threw it away, too. That’s why I was writing that letter, to explain to Jon why I’d done that.” 

_She throws the sword away, and then worries about explaining to her brother as to why?_ _And she’s afraid of hurting someone?_

Gendry silently cursed himself for not having come sooner. 

“Has anyone else been here? Besides whoever brings the food in?” 

Silence, this time of the purely uncomfortable kind, then: “My mother, once. I almost chased her out. After that I remembered that I still had the string and …” 

“Made this”, he pointed to her wrist. 

“Yes.” 

Gendry had to sit down on the floor, his head felt all dizzy and confused. Looking beside him, he found the abandoned meal lying on the floor. At a rough guess, not even a quarter of it was gone. 

“You really should eat more”, he told her. 

“I know. I tried, but I just can’t … It makes me think too much of the meat Nymeria always brought us.” 

Gendry nodded, then took the knife lying there with the plate. Again kneeling beside the bed, he brought it to the string Arya had bound herself with, but her other hand caught him before he’d reached it. He wondered why that surprised him. She’d always been quicker than him, after all. 

“Seriously, Arya, but this is _wrong_.” 

Her hand never wavered. 

“Who are you to tell me that? You’re from King’s Landing, you wanted to be a knight; imagine you’d succeeded. Maybe you’d have been there. Probably there were other people there, people like you, and I’ve killed them. _All_ of them. So who are you, to tell me that?” 

“Your friend”, Gendry answered. 

“What I did was _wrong_ ,” she insisted. 

He could see she was close to tears now; if it had been him, he suspected he’d have broken already, but of course Arya had always been tougher than he was. 

“I didn’t say it was right, Arya. Just … you know, the Blackfish told me that to be a knight doesn’t mean that you’re great at fighting, it means that you know when _not_ to fight.” 

“Well, I can’t ever be a knight, can I? Maybe that’s why I didn’t know.” 

This was one of these queer statements she made from time to time, the kind where he wasn’t sure if she meant it or was joking. 

“But you do know now.” 

He tried to smile at her, and for a moment was sure there was something — just a slight twitch — in the corners of her mouth, too. 

“You remember? What we promised each other, when we were on the run?” He waited a moment, until she gave a light nod. “You’ll always be Arya to me, no matter what. And you _are_ Arya, and you’re definitely not some monster, you’re definitely not one of these witches from the stories, and you know why?” 

“Why?”, she whispered, just barely audible. 

“Because you admit that you were wrong.” 

She sunk back into the bed for a moment, and while Gendry was starting to wonder if maybe something of the cold food lying around was still edible, if maybe he could get her to eat it — she really was in need of a meal; years on the street had made him all too familiar with how starving people looked like — when she said: 

“You know all that means nothing, don’t you? Even if I feel bad about it, it doesn’t help those who’re already dead.” 

“No”, he agreed, “But it helps all those that won’t die because you won’t do it again, even if they never know of it.” 

Silence fell on them, then, and though it wasn’t quite the warm kind of it they’d shared so often above a campfire or even in this very room between two stories, it certainly felt more comfortable than the one Gendry had found when he’d shoved open the door. 

After some time, she let his arm go, and he cut the string in half. Secretly, he was almost sure she was glad of it; not at least she couldn’t do any more needlework any more. 

They sat together in silence for a while. Finally, Arya asked if he didn’t have duties to attend, and that he really shouldn’t get himself into trouble because of her — 

“Arya, I’m not living in the forge anymore. You know … that letter you left, before … well, the King — er, your brother — he read it. The Blackfish took me on as squire.” 

Suddenly, as if the sun had come forth behind a cloud and was now streaming into the room, there was a smile on Arya’s face. 

“Took them long enough. And … I’m sorry that you were in the dungeon because of me.” 

“Wasn’t your fault, Arya.” 

“Still, I’m sorry.” 

Maybe that shouldn’t mean as much to him as it did, because obviously, it _hadn’t_ been her fault. Still, in some way, it mattered more than his sudden status as a squire. Much more. 

“So? If you’re a squire now, shouldn’t you … I don’t know, be outside in the yard or something?” 

“Yeah. Probably I should be outside, learning to ride. I’m still horrible at it,” he admitted. 

“I remember. Never met anyone so scared of a horse.” No smile, this time, but since what she’d said almost amounted to a joke Gendry decided that counted, too. 

There was a moment of silence as Gendry refused to move. 

“Really, Gendry, you should go. You’ll get in trouble otherwise.” 

Still not going, Gendry asked her: “What about you?” 

“Me?” 

“You know, Arya, it’s still early. The sun’s barely up. There’ll be something to eat in the great hall.” 

There was confusion in her face, and maybe a little hint of sadness. Or possibly fear. Or both 

_She’s still afraid of herself_ , he suddenly realized. 

“Ah, right … I won’t go to riding-training if you don’t go to eat something?” 

Now there was definitely confusion on her face. 

“They wouldn’t want me there, anyways. Not after —” 

“Arya, stop that! Stop saying that everybody’s afraid of you, or hates you or some such, it’s not true! If you’d have ever actually been out there you’d have noticed that they _miss_ you.” 

Stunned silence, then: 

“Really?” 

There was no hint of irony in her voice; she was, he realized, genuinely surprised. 

“Yes!”, he cried out, now more than a little confused himself. “Sorry”, he added, once he’d noticed how load he’d just shouted. 

Slowly, silence fell again, sank into the chamber as if somebody had tried to lay a blanket over it. 

_Well, if so, it’s certainly a nice blanket_ , Gendry thought. 

It really was the more comfortable kind of quietness. And to his surprise, after some time, Arya nodded, and slowly tried to climb out of the bed. She was shivering from hunger, he saw, and should really have a change of clothes, but right now he didn’t care. 

Together they made their way out of her chambers — the maid cried out in astonishment at seeing her lady leaving it — and down the corridor and stairs. Soon enough she walked on her own, and there was even something of the almost-always running old Arya to her steps. 

They parted ways at the great Hall’s entrance — she in, to break her fast, if somewhat belatedly, he out again, to face the Blackfish’s shouting that must undoubtedly follow his lateness. 

What he hadn’t expected was to find that his master was missing. Horren, the stableboy sitting at the door, refused to tell him a thing on what was going on. Not mush later the missing knight arrived, took a look at Gendry, said “There you are, boy!” but then left it at that. 

Gendry never asked, but he suspected the man had been checking on his niece. 

The following days he gave up on ever finding anything useful in Maester Vyman’s library. It might well be that there _was_ a text explaining exactly what he’d needed to know, but he felt it wasn’t really likely he’d ever stumble across it, what with half a page a day being the fastest he could decipher all these letters. 

Of course, that left him with free mornings. 

Which in turn meant that he was much more likely to have time to see Arya. And now that he’d actually gotten himself to visit her once, he didn’t seem to be able to stop again. 

For her part, Arya was happy to see him, most times. Or as happy as Arya ever was, these days, but still. Sometimes they both tried to pretend that nothing had ever happened, though normally that didn’t really work. Still, they made progress. Arya started to be at meals more and more, and Gendry found he was less haunted by the wolves, howling, than he’d been before. 

Sometimes one of them — or both at the same time — would slip back and not say a word to the other in a day, but only sometimes. 

Two days after he’d first visited her, Hot Pie suddenly found himself called in by the castle’s steward, assigned to work in the kitchen. Both Arya and Gendry agreed — and told him, too — that the castle’s food had started to taste a little better, even the simple stews they served the smallfolk. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that was a tough one. Finally the veil lifts and there's a good look at what I'd say is the story's core … hope I managed to pull it off.
> 
> (Notice that this chapter was started before the last one, that's why I jumped over Catelyn's conversation with Arya, 'cause I'd never planned that to happen).
> 
> Oh, and I've just got the _Doctor Who Series 9_ DVD Box, so if any of the characters show aspects of either the Doctor, Clara or Ashildr | Lady Me, ahm … yeah. There are some I included consciously because I thought them fitting, but it might be that there are others that really aren't fitting, too.
> 
> Also, please excuse Hot Pie's entirely different accent from last time he showed up. All I can say is that English isn't my mother tongue, so basically that's just me doing some things that hopefully aren't completely unrealistic or laughable to the words he speaks.
> 
> Hope it was a good read. Thoughts?


	5. Bran

Heaven was falling, and Bran with it. Clouds and dust, monsters and terrors quietly hushed by, short glimpses out into the bright eternal darkness, while he fell through the fog of dreams. 

A flash and a bird’s cry, and he stood on firm and solid ground, or ground that appeared to be solid. 

_Here_ , in this case, was somewhere before a bright and towering castle, as ancient as anything could ever be. 

For a moment, Bran thought the walls were leaking blood from within. Something terrible must’ve happened to it. 

_No_ , he realized. What coloured his sight in red wasn’t blood at all; instead, the entire intricate stonework was overgrown tightly; covered deeply in the millennia that had quietly gone by. It was like eternity itself had come to hug the walls and squeeze them almost to the point of breaking. 

If there was anything else to this world, then it was concealed, hidden from view by an all-powerful veil, or maybe by the mist, and the fog. 

Thunder reached his ears, and slowly it lifted and distance was revealed to him. 

The sky above him was white, and stark, and threatening. 

On the fields around him, wooden poles stood, a boy or girl impaled on each of them. Their blood had watered the ground for a very long time. The secret lands of greenseers was red, it appeared. 

_I’ve been here before,_ Bran thought. 

The dreamer looked up and around him. 

A gigantic weirwood towered above him, ancient and surprisingly faceless. Looking around again, Bran understood. It was sustained by the dreamers who had come before, by those who’d seen and died of it. The closer to the tree, the older the men and women whom the bodies on the spikes had belonged to. It had some sort of a beauty to it, he was sure, but he wasn’t quite certain if he’d seen it. 

There was a crow sitting on its lower branches, far enough away that he was barely able to discern it in the leaves as a bird and not a simple black spot. 

“North”, it thundered, more in his head then in this weird world, “You have to go north.” 

So Bran went north. 

The lands he crossed were strange; as if someone had taken everything he knew, taken it apart and put it back together again, but slightly wrong. Every glance showed him things that weren’t quite as they were supposed to be: a bush of red grass, a two trees joining in the air, a brook flowing up the hill. Little things, but all unsettling, and taken together they frightened him more than he would care to admit. 

He couldn’t help feeling that there was something giant and threatening looming far above it him, and above the world. 

But whenever he looked, there was just the ice-white sky, staring blankly back at him. 

The crow had followed him, too, and Bran could see it had three eyes, gleaming and staring demandingly at him. 

He was afraid. 

He continued to go north. 

Finally he reached the wall. It was here, too, just not how he’d imagined it. It was not merely a wall; it seemed more that the world made a turn side-ways and continued upwards into endless space and heights. No matter how far he stretched his dreamer’s head, there was no upper bound to it. It might disappear into the mist, be Bran knew all the same that even beyond that there was never an end to it. The Wall made its presence known in a way that only infinite things could ever conceive. Only one thing had ever felt remotely like it to Bran, and that was staring off into the stars at night, and even then it hadn’t been nearly as powerful. 

To all directions, it continued without bounds, a solid block of something that was clearly ice and somehow wasn’t. Maybe if someone had put the ice on fire and let it burn low, just before it went out, it would’ve looked like this. If so, then in some places the wall was burning high and proud. 

And in others it had burned itself out, until it stood just on the brink of extinction. In too many places it was fully dark already, or as dark as ice can ever be, and a coldness streamed out from it that Bran had felt before but once. 

The whole thing not merely seemed impassable; somehow, Bran knew it truly _was_ impossible for anything to break through it, as impossible as it was for him ever to walk again when he was awake. 

At that thought he involuntarily looked down upon himself, and found he was as whole as he’d ever been, with both legs working properly. He wondered why he hadn’t wondered about how he was walking before. 

_I can’t break through this_ , he thought, _No one can._

“No one”, agreed the crow, its voice a thunder across the dream-land, “but there are ways through it, hidden, locked. Find one, and you will pass.” 

“Why? Why should I want to pass?” 

“You know why,” the wind sang, “You’ve seen what lays beyond already.” 

Lights danced and the Wall flickered, slightly but ominously. It seemed imaginable that it could ever fail, but the signs of it were clearly there to see for all who cared to look. Not that many ever did. 

Bran nodded, and began his search. 

Close to it everything was bright and glowing and unnatural; whenever he came within what he judged to be arm’s reach — it was hard to be sure; he didn’t want to touch the Wall, and it always seemed like it could be right there or miles away — then his whole field of view would turn into one solid block of lightning shaped and carved into bricks. 

At least, that was true of the parts that were still well-maintained. 

Other parts were black as the night, and still others almost translucent. Bran didn’t look at them; he didn’t need to. He’d seen the Heart of Winter when he’d been here before, and there was no need to stare into it again. 

At first he hadn’t noticed, but slowly it seemed to him that he wasn’t the only thing at the wall. Here and there, little flocks of small black birds had made their nest along its length. 

_Crows,_ he knew them. 

_The Night’s Watch._

When finally he found a gate he almost missed it, so well had it been hidden. Not a single difference was there that he could spot or smell or touch and yet Bran knew it was close. There were guards, too, but he felt them weaken in his presence. 

_No_ , he noted, _they weaken in the three-eyed crow’s presence, not mine._

The bird was still with him, watching his every move. 

Bran stepped in front of the gate, and it opened. Terrors lay beyond; he could see them, _feel_ them. 

Silence engulfed the world. 

Everything seemed to be waiting, waiting for him to decide. 

The air felt thick and frozen, as if someone was halting it in place. 

Until, far in the distance, a terrible cry shattered the silence and left it in pieces. 

Bran turned around to see from whence it came, and everything was dark. The world rushed away from him and left him behind. No. _He_ was leaving _it_ behind. 

What seemed like an eternity later, Brandon Stark opened his eyes. 

The darkness engulfed him here, too, but it was of a more comfortable, familiar kind. He could just spy a stone statue — and with this one, everything was right in the place it ought to be — and something bright and blinding … after some while, he could make out a candle bravely fighting against the night, shining on the girl who was holding it. 

_Good Morning, my prince,_ she greeted him, then frowned. _I think it is morning, at least_ _…_

_Meera,_ he knew her. _The crypts, yes_ _…_

They’d been here for a long time, it seemed. 

_But it stood there, proud and tall,_ he remembered the tall castle in his dream, _ancient and_ _powerful._

What else could it have been but Winterfell in all its ancient glory? It had looked different, sure, but Bran knew it had also been the same as well. 

“Jojen? Osha?”, he called. “I think it’s time to go up out again.” 

He’d dreamed it true. After Hodor had carried him up they found Winterfell there, whole and true again, with the Direwolf of Stark flying proudly above the gate. For a moment everything seemed as if nothing had ever been amiss, before the people of the castle realized who had appeared in their midst. Soon they were cheering and dancing and seemed unable to stop again. 

_Let them be happy_ , Bran thought, who knew nothing was over yet _let them be happy now,_ _before they can’t be anymore._

One look at Jojen told him the other boy had thought the same. Osha was just happy for the daylight, it seemed, but then she couldn’t see the way Bran could see, or Jojen. Rickon had joined the celebrating castle folk. But Meera stayed behind, looking at her brother, worry on her face. Hodor was hodor. 

In the great Hall they found Maester Luwin, and Ser Rodrick, too, and momentarily pretended that nothing had happened. Thankfully, no one mentioned the boys’ heads that had been displayed in front of the gates — Bran knew of them, of course, but he hadn’t told anyone else yet. Jojen might have dreamt of them, but the others didn’t have to learn of those boys just yet. 

_I wonder who they were, who had to die in place of us._

He swore himself to find that out once he was once more the Stark in Winterfell. If they’d had to die for him and Rickon, at least their names should be remembered well. 

Even if it might seem that way, all was not perfect. Of course it never was, but this was not as close as Bran would’ve hoped. Over the following days he learnt from Maester Luwin that Reek was still alive, for one, and that it had turned out he’d tricked Ser Rodrick and was actually Lord Bolton’s bastard Ramsey, the one who’d made Lady Hornwood eat her own fingers, as well. 

“Why hasn’t anyone sentenced him?,” he demanded. 

_My father showed me how to do it._ He probably would have to change the words somewhat to include Robb in place of Robert Baratheon, and use another sword — a cripple like him could hardly lift a greatsword, after all, and anyways Ice was still stolen by the Lannisters — but he’d do it himself, if needs be. 

“Ser Rodrick would’ve done so already, if I hadn’t stopped him.” 

“ _You?_ ” Bran exclaimed, shock in his voice. 

“He has well over a thousand of his father’s men at his command. If he dies … who knows what they’ll do to Winterfell?” 

It took Bran a moment before understanding dawned. _He’s afraid_ , he realized. The Maester had lived through the whole of Theon’s occupation, had maybe even seen the boys at the gate die, of course he was afraid. 

Not that he was alone with that. _I’ve lived for weeks in a grave, I understand._ He wondered if he should say that out loud, but decided it would sound all stupid and childish, not something the ruling Prince of Winterfell was supposed to say. So instead, Bran hoped his face showed enough of how he thought. 

“But has to die, surely. What will Robb say if he’s —” 

_Oh._

The next day Bran had Ramsey Snow arrested and put into a dungeon, to await King Robb’s justice. The bastard’s men stirred and some were heard complaining, but nothing more; it was hard, not to say suspicious, to argue against the king’s justice, after all, and much harder than against a castellan’s or even a prince’s. 

He’d half wanted to make it the same gruff cell the man had once been in as Reek, but Maester Luwin cautioned him, and instead sent him into a cell fit for a noble’s son, if not quite for a lord. Too many say him as a saviour of Winterfell, and too many would look at other actions doubtfully. Bran tried and failed to understand how anyone could think that brutish-looking monster anything else then a creature that would’ve been at home in Old Nan’s stories. 

Ser Rodrick, for his part, appeared thankful that _something_ had happened. Bran wondered why the man hadn’t done anything by himself; after all, the Castellan of Winterfell was not bound to the Maester’s counselling. 

_Maybe he’s afraid, too_ , Bran thought. He remembered what his father had told him once, about fear and bravery. 

Bran was very afraid. 

He dearly hoped that what he did was brave as well. 

But while he spend his days worrying, his nights belonged to the dreams. Now that he could slip into Summer whenever he wanted — he’d learnt that, too, in the darkness of the crypts — it seemed that he’d stopped doing it in his sleep, and instead would find himself in the dream-world. 

Most every morning he’d wake to the same memories of making his way to the impossible thing that was the Wall and being stopped by the scream at the last moment. It took him days before he realized that it wasn’t a _frightening_ scream; instead, it was a _frightened_ one, a scream of terror. 

Once he knew that, he tried to go find it instead. Ignoring the crow which would be pecking at him all the way wasn’t easy, not even in this dream where he still had both his legs to run, but eventually he managed. 

In his dreams the south was full of mist and fog, streaming from great wide rivers that he crossed without thinking. Sometimes, in the distance, there appeared to be a looming tower, or maybe a mountain, impossibly old. 

Occasionally there was a weirwood, though not as often as in the North. More often there would be nothing left but stumps all staring sadly at the passing dreamer; once, Bran found a ring of them, twenty at the least, all cut down long ago. 

It took him many nights to find what he was looking for. 

The scream grew closer then, but in a way that didn’t help to locate it. Though sometimes it would now be accompanied by wailing, too. Hushing figures would surround him, like ghosts or demons, not many of them human. Most had four legs and appeared to be running. He thought he recognized at least one of them, but never could be sure. 

And at last he found her, though by that time she’d stopped crying. A girl, maybe a year or two older than he was himself, staring out into the dream-world. 

_Arya._

And his dream grind to a screeching halt, as if someone had stopped time itself. 

_My sister. I thought you were dead._

She stared at him. 

_I’m not,_ came the answer. It wasn’t really speech, Bran supposed, and more like she’d decided to share her thoughts with him. If there was any sound to wit of it other than the strange echoing sort of noise it made inside his head, then it was lost on him. 

If their form of communication could be considered talking, then Bran supposed they talked for a very long time. He hoped he’d remember all of it once day broke and Measter Luwin had to wake him again. 

There was so much that had happened. 

There was so much to tell. 

The next day he found the names of the two boys who’d died for him and Rickon. Thom and Stevan. He ordered them to be mourned properly, and had their battered remains placed in the servant’s graveyard in Winterfell though neither of them had ever set foot within its grounds in life. Their father, it turned out, had been killed by Ramsey Snow as well, but the mother had escaped. He offered her a place within the walls of Winterfell though she declined, not wanting to be so close to the place where her sons had been impaled on spikes. Bran could understand. 

And then in the next night, when he was dreaming again, Bran finally went through the hidden gate in the Wall to what lay beyond. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the last one was tough, then this one was _weird_. The only thing that comes close to this that I've ever written before is my [Sherun, or, an Adventurer's Life](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7237423), which sort of starts as a fantasy story and after half of it is done it turns into a rip-off of _The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath_ (I love that story, by the way. When one mentions Lovecraft, people will always talk about _The Call of Cthulhu_ and _At the Mountains of Madness_ and all that stuff, and of course that's cool, too, but I always felt that the Dream-Quest is the better story. It's sort of my favorite and shares this status with _The Strange High House in The Mist_ ). I'm not sure what this chapter does. It starts weird, then tries to get back to normal and fails horribly at it, to go back and end even weirder than it began.
> 
> I might just possibly have written a crossover between _A Song of Ice And Fire_ and Lovecraft's hard-to-define world, or I might just have expended a little (or a little more) on the short glimpses that we get of Asoiaf's inner workings and turnings.
> 
> Or it might just be crap. That could be, too, I suppose.
> 
> What do you think?


	6. Podrick

Pod was used to being ignored, so being stuck in a cell wasn’t really too bad for him. At least it meant that no one was beating him, or laughing at him. 

_It could’ve been worse, really_ , he considered, _with Lord Tyrion gone._

And at least it wasn’t one of the black cells. He’d seen them once, when Lord Tyrion had inspected them, and they weren’t the kind of place he would have longed to see again. Lord Varys had told them — or rather, told Lord Tyrion, Pod had just happened to stand nearby — that a man was more like to die of thirst in them than of the executioner’s blade. His uncle’s blade. 

Although, probably it wasn’t his uncle anymore. Stannis was in the city now, no matter how much Lord Tyrion had done to protect it from the pretender, and not even Pod was stupid enough to think he’d go away anytime soon. 

He just hoped that _King_ Stannis felt the loss of his men sorely and acutely, or else all the work had been for nothing, all the catapults built and all the trouble with the guild of pyromancers. 

_The wildfire_ , he remembered, _the river on fire, with green flames licking and flickering_ _towards the night-black sky._

It wasn’t the kind of sight he was like to forget, same as Stannis’s wobbling boat-bridge, or the sight of his madmen crossing it and storming at him in their rage. 

And then there were the shapes of men floating in the water, sometimes still burning. 

One man in particular, of course. A knight, impaled on a spear a boy had thrust at him, his once white cloak turned red and muddy, floating around him. A sword splashing into the black and gulping water after it had left a bloody gash in his lord’s face. 

He hadn’t _meant_ to kill the man, he truly hadn’t, but Pod couldn’t have Lord Tyrion die on him, either. 

He’d been kind to him, after all. Kinder than he had ever been used to. 

Podrick hoped he was well. They’d managed to reach the riverbank again; or rather, he’d managed it with Lord Tyrion’s small body flung over his shoulder, desperate not to fall and drown with every step. But soon after he’d stumbled back on the rocky beach his strength had left him, leaving his memories patchy at best, with gaping holes in them. 

Vaguely, like through a thick layer of mist, he recalled someone picking him up, and a moving mouth hovering above him. Maybe it had been shouting. _Yes_ , he thought, _it must_ _have been shouting. Shouting for someone else to come._

When you found Lord Tyrion lying around, you weren’t like to ignore it, after all, nor the boy holding him in his arms. 

Probably someone had seen the Payne sigil on his tunic, or maybe the Lannister lion on his meagre armour (really, it had just been a helmet and some chain-mail that hardly deserved the name) and taken him back to the Red Keep. He was, at least, fairly sure that this was were he was now. At least, it seemed like the walls were very slightly red. 

As dungeons went, he’d gotten the softer side of them, he supposed. It was small, yes, but not completely black — there was a small hole in the wall opposite the door, letting the sun shine in, though it wasn’t big enough for him to get a clear view outside — and not quite as filthy and reeking as some other places he’d been. Apparently he’d been judged important enough to warrant his own cell, too. That was something he wasn’t used to. No one ever thought him important, not even the least bit. 

Once a day the door would be opened half-way, and he’d receive this day’s ration of bread and water. Although it wasn’t much, he never ate it all at once; he’d learnt long ago that it wasn’t any good only eating once a day. Of course it was the same amount if he split it to two or three smaller meals a day, but it somehow _felt_ as if it was more, and that was really all that mattered. 

He didn’t count the days, though. That way, he could always tell himself that he’d only been here a relatively short time. And since the days never changed, it was easy enough to loose track. 

It was on his fourth day, then, that they came for him and took him to the new king. At least he told himself that it was the fourth day. He suspected that it had been the forth day yesterday, too, and the day before that, and probably some more days even before that. 

While the guards brought him towards the great hall, for the first time Pod could see where he’d been for so long. He’d been right guessing that it was the Red Keep and not some other place in King’s Landing. His cell was in one of the outer side-wings, one of the attachments that had been added after Meagor the Cruel’s time. If one looked closely it was still easy to see where the original outer wall had been breached and redirected. The Red Keep truly was nothing if not huge, and from there it took them quite some time before they reached Maegor’s holdfast, the castle-within-a-castle that kept the heart of the realm. 

He tried to see how much damage had been dealt to the walls during the battle, and found it to be not as much as he’d expected to see. 

_But it’s called Aegon’s_ high _hill for a reason_ , he reminded himself. Few catapults or trebuchets, none of them practical on a ship, could have flung anything that seriously threatened the Keep itself. 

_And Stannis wanted to take it, too, not destroy it._ Lord Tyrion had said that Stannis was nothing if not intelligent and just, and neither would make him want to deal damage he’d have to pay right afterwards. 

The previously ever-present Lannister crimson was gone, of course. Although Pod wasn’t too sure if he could tell the exact difference between Lannister crimson and the red Stannis himself used on his banner, for the burning heart of his queer Asshai’i god. 

What _had_ changed, though, was the newly-erected pile of wood in front of the gates to the inner castle. Apparently it had been built on a foundation made of ashes. 

_Lord Varys said that Stannis worshipped demons_ , he reminded himself. A nightfire, then, to be lit by sundown, built on the remnants of yesterday’s. He’d heard tales of them; half the keep had constantly been whispering about what Stannis and his red queen were doing. 

He wondered if it wouldn’t be better to use all the wood for rebuilding the damage done to the city. 

Inside Meagor’s Holdfast, though, the change was more noticeable. While life had seemingly returned quickly to the court, the people he saw where all strangers. Even some of the servants were new; Stannis had obviously been very thorough. 

On the gates to the Great Hall now proudly hung a crowned stag within its burning heart. 

But the throneroom itself had stayed the same, no matter how many queer demonic symbols Stannis had put on the walls, or how many golden crowned stags framed the windows. 

Because _nothing_ would ever have the power to change the monstrosity that was the Iron Throne. Podrick had known that when he’d first laid his eyes on it, years ago, and knew it was just as true now. The black mass of iron and steel would loom above this hall as long as King’s Landing itself would stand. 

A new set of knights stood there to guard it, of course, though curiously they didn’t appear to wear any white cloaks. The normally ever-present Lords Littlefinger and Varys were gone as well. Littlefinger’s absence was no surprise, he had, after all, abandoned them for the Tyrells and was probably still with them, but Lord Varys … _either he’s been executed_ _or else has fled._ Given the Spider’s whispered knowledge of the Red Keep’s secret passages, Pod suspected the latter. 

But other than that not very much was different now; there was a woman in red next to the throne — probably the red witch — but however much she tried, she failed to make much of an impression next to the twenty-feet high pile of molten swords next to her. Even the crowd attending the spectacle was roughly the same size it had been when Joffrey held court. But then, Podrick suspected that this had been going on for days, he’d just been pushed to the end because of course he wasn’t anyone important, and by now the city’s commoners had tired of the whole thing and gone back to work on rebuilding their burned-out houses. 

And one other thing struck him. His uncle was missing. 

_What did you expect? Of course he’s gone, why would Stannis let him live?_

He felt a blow heavier than he would’ve thought possible. Ser Ilyn had never really meant much to him, and had never really been there for him, either, but he’d still been the closest Pod had ever come to a family. 

Pod could almost feel tears gathering in his eyes, tears he would’ve never expected. 

_No, no, not now, I can’t cry now, not with all these people —_ Luckily, he got it under control. Mostly. He’d learnt long ago what happened to boys who cried when people were staring at them. 

And right now, it was King Stannis who stared at him. With a start, Pod realized he hadn’t knelt in front of him, and almost threw himself on the ground. 

_Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me_ _…_

“Will you be loyal to Stannis of the House Baratheon, the first of his name, King of the Andaly, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm?” 

Pod was grateful that it hadn’t been Stannis who had spoken, until he realized it had been the Red Woman instead. Somewhere his mind was wondering what had happened to “Defender of the Faith”, but that part quickly found itself drowned out. 

Though Pod was already kneeling, he tried to bow as deeply as possible without falling over, before saying, as loud and clearly as he could manage, “Yes, your Grace.” 

It hadn’t been King Joffrey he’d been loyal to, anyway, but Lord Tyrion, who had never really been too loyal to his nephew, either. Of course Lord Tyrion was likely dead, too, come to think of it. 

He’d hoped that it would be enough to just accept Stannis as his king, but after that the questions began. Did he know that Joffrey and his siblings had been abominations and born of incest between Cersei and Jaime Lannister, against all laws of God? 

“Yes, your Grace.” 

Silently he hoped the past tense only applied to Joffrey, and not to Tommen and Myrcella as well, but of course he couldn’t ask. _At least Myrcella must be alive_ , he told himself, _she’s_ _in Dorne, after all. And Lord Tyrion had Tommen hidden in someplace safe, too._ Not even he knew where exactly that was. 

Before he could think any further, the next question came. Did he have even an inkling of where Lord Tyrion might be now, or had he helped him escape? 

Grateful that he didn’t have to lie, he said “No, your Grace. I was with him when the battle ended, but after that I only woke up already back in the Keep.” He hoped it wasn’t too obvious that this was happy news for him; already he started wondering how his lord might have escaped, and _where._

Then they told him that his uncle was dead. Of course he’d suspected that already, but hearing it said out loud somehow made it hurt more; it was almost like Ser Ilyn had died in exactly the instant the word left the witch’s mouth. 

Resolutely, Pod continued to fight his eyes who still resolutely insisted on starting to cry. There was also an urge to flee, to run away, and he tried his hardest to oppress that as well. He was in it deep enough already, there was no need to create further trouble. 

_Don’t kill me, don’t kill me, don’t kill me_ _…_

Finally, Stannis himself opened his mouth and proclaimed a verdict. Pod listened to the words so intently to it that he immediately forgot them again, and only the gist of it remained, but that was enough. 

_You’re hearby sentenced to die,_ was all he would ever remember of this day. 

_Don’t kill me, don’t kill me, don’t kill —_

It felt like running against a wall, Pod supposed. He actually found himself struggling not to fall over on the hard marble ground. 

_Death._

He could see the Stranger in front of him, reaching for him, reaching like a snake for him … 

_I don’t want to die,_ he thought. But what was there he could do? 

Lord Tyrion had once said that his mind was his weapon. Pod had been his squire. So the only weapon he could possibly have was his own mind, thick and slow as it might be. 

_Think!_

What to do in face of a death sentence? He remembered that Lord Tyrion had once demanded trial by combat, but who’d fight for him, unimportant boy that he was? 

Did he know anyone who’d ever tricked an executioner? 

Anyone who’d somehow manage to elude death? 

_Anything?_

Looming despair flooded through him, his every bone feeling cold and hard and immovable. 

No one ever escaped the King’s Justice, because otherwise, what would be the point? Even the great Lord Stark, Hand of the King, had ended under his uncle’s blade, just like any other … 

_Wait._

“Your Grace,” he began, his voice shaking. 

“Your Grace,” he repeated, trying to make it sound steadier, “I will accept your sentence if that is your wish; however, I feel I would serve this realm better if you were to allow me to join the Night’s Watch.” 

His words were like magic. 

And a week later the world found him on a ship northwards, together with a hundred others who’d thought of the same way out, frozen to the bone, but wonderfully _alive._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this one doesn't really seem to fit into the rest of this story, but I still felt it was part of it, so here it is (and the main stuff will continue next week).
> 
> On another note, I've just bought and started reading a copy of _The Gunslinger_ by Stephen King. It's sort of depressing, really; the opening creates about the feeling I tried to achieve with the opening of my last chapter, it just manages to do that properly. Also, in case anyone here has already read the whole _The Dark Tower_ , could you please tell me if I should read them in chronological order (including _The Wind Through the Keyhole_ after book 4) or in the order they were written (going straight from book 4 to 5)?
> 
> I hope I got Stannis right, btw. I also felt the need to stress repeatedly just how enormous the Iron Throne is, because many people walk away thinking it's the size it's in the show (I actually just searched for an image to demonstrate this, and found that [ the Iron Throne actually got its own wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Throne_\(A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire\)), with a proper image, too!).
> 
> Thoughts on the chapter?


	7. Gendry 3

It had taken them almost a week, but at last Arya and Gendry were talking — carefully, but surely — about the wolves rampaging outside of Riverrun, and why they might be doing that. 

“They’re wolves,” Arya said, “Of course they’re doing that.” 

Once, back when Yoren had still been alive, Gendry remembered, she’d scoffed at the very idea of wolves harming people. She’d almost caused an inn brawl in the process, after all, and he wasn’t like to forget it. He didn’t tell her that, of course, and anyway he suspected that she knew all the same. She’d been the one to say it, after all. 

But now she swore him over and over again that she hadn’t been inside Nymeria since she’d come back, not even in the week that otherwise they both determinedly refused to talk about or even mention, when they’d both hidden from each other. Of course there was no need for her to swear any oaths to make him believe her, and he told her so, but Arya brushed that away. He half-suspected she did it for herself as much as for him, but didn’t ask. 

It was only a day later when an idea decided to pop into Gendry’s head, at the most unexpected of moments — in fact, he’d been talking with, or rather listening to, Hot Pie endlessly chattering about different kinds of beans and turnips and how they tasted differently (something that Gendry had been aware of, but never really thought about before). The boy somehow managed to excel all of his previous efforts to talk about distressingly boring, things. Once Gendry had asked him why, and the answer he’d been given was that Hot Pie now learnt how to cook. That had confused Gendry somewhat, which he told him, but Hot Pie explained that in King’s Landing he’d only ever been a baker, and though of course he’d known something of making a simple stew as well, this was the first time he learnt it _properly_ , whatever that meant. 

Not that Gendry had much time to wonder, because he was suddenly springing up from his seat in the long bench of servants and peasants who were breaking their fasts at the lower tables in the great Hall, fearing he’d forget his idea just a minute later if he didn’t hurry. 

Bursting into Arya’s bedchamber, he found her sitting on the chair she’d once bolted the door with, reading a book that seemed vaguely familiar to him. 

_It’s one of those thrice-damned paper-heaps that had_ warg _in the title but didn’t loose a_ _word about the matter in the actual pages._

Gendry knew these well. After all, he’d spent every morning of an entire week trying to pressure them for knowledge. 

“Gendry!”, she exclaimed, surprised and confused, “I — I don’t understand, did something happen?” 

“Just had an idea,” he told her, hurriedly, jumping about as if he was chasing it through her room, “Ahm … you can — you can sort of _go_ into Nymeria’s mind and make her do what you want, don’t you?” 

“I told you already, I haven’t done that!” 

_Which is my point exactly._

“Yes? Well, I think maybe you should. If can just make her do whatever you like, you could go into her and make the wolves _stop_ hunting people.” 

Her face, Gendry supposed, looked a bit as if someone had moulded a bit of iron into a shape that roughly resembled Arya. Not even the surprise of him showing up all of a sudden had left it, it had just frozen into shape. 

At last she snapped out of it, changed her face to an expression of utter bewilderment and got promptly stuck again. 

It felt like days later when she finally said, in that precisely that calm and somewhat quiet tone she always used when she was afraid and didn’t bother to hide it, “What?” 

In the following few moments, Gendry suddenly understood what she meant with his “thinking-face”. Hers was quite extraordinary, but then, with Arya no one could expect anything to be normal. 

She truly did seem to be deep in thought. 

At last she found her voice again. 

“Have you gone mad?” 

_Maybe._

They spoke no more of that then, at least not on that particular day. Gendry had work to do, obviously, and she had found something to do, too — apparently she was helping the steward, that man Utherydes Wayn, with some records. When Gendry had taken a look at it, once, it had seemed all just long monotone lists of numbers arranged in something of a grid, and Arya would sit there, thinking, slowly adding another row to the thing. 

Even she herself said that it was incredibly boring, but apparently it was important, and it gave her something to do she didn’t have to leave her chambers for that wasn’t needlework. As much as he wished otherwise, while Arya would show up at meals, and sometimes, very occasionally, in the yard or the godswood, it almost seemed she’d retreated again, and left her chamber less than she had before. 

Although he half suspected and half knew that she’d befriended her maid and was too stubborn to admit to it after she’d complained about her to him before. Or else she was just playing that strange board-and-figurines game with herself, and Bertha’s bettering mood had some entirely unrelated other cause. 

For a few days, life blundered on and mostly consisted of sword-training (although the Blackfish kept telling him he’d be better with a warhammer Gendry adamantly refused; if there was one thing he didn’t want to be than it was using the same type of weapon his wretched royal father had been famous for) and struggling not to fall of horses. 

But while no one (or at least neither Arya nor Gendry, and if Ser Edmure had sent out hunters to deal with them than he hadn’t told anyone) mentioned the wolves again, his idea about them was far from forgotten. In fact, it seemed more like they were both constantly carrying it in their minds now, even if they never told the other of it. On occasion he’d catch her deep in thought, just staring at a wall, when he came to visit her; and more than once he’d been struck by the Blackfish’s wooden sword because his mind wasn’t really paying attention to what his hands were doing. 

Too often did he hear the wolves howling, and he suspected with Arya it was the same. Well, not really the same. After all, he’d just _heard_ them, she’d _made_ them. 

_Surely_ , he thought, _that’s quite a difference._

Not that he cared to imagine precisely how much of a difference. 

So instead they both tried to vigorously ignore it. Occasionally that worked, when Gendry talked to Hot Pie — whose ramblings might not always interest him, but had a way of making him _listen_ , even if it was profoundly boring, which helped to take his mind away from other things — or when Arya tried to teach him how to read properly. Sometimes she’d even laugh at his mistakes. Not that Gendry minded, because, mostly, they _were_ ridiculous (although they’d both agreed that letters behaved ridiculous, too), and also because he’d make any number of mistakes to hear her laugh more. So they’d spend hours complaining to each other about letters, and about the words they made, too — the texts Maester Vyman had chosen for him had a tendency to be dry, pointless, or both at the same time. They’d also both laugh at each other’s handwriting — his because it was shaky, hers because no one could read it, sometimes not even Arya herself. 

Still, the wolves hung like a looming sword above their every conversation, ready to fall down on them any second should they be mentioned. 

The closest they ever came to it was talking about the war, or Winterfell. By now Gendry felt he knew its every twist and turning from what Arya had told him; it seemed almost impossible he’d never been there himself. He hoped to see it one day, if only to see Arya at home and happy, the way he remembered being happy when his mother had still been alive. Sometimes she’d even smile at the memory. 

Not that they talked about Winterfell often, what with the notorious lack of news from the north. 

Arya was worried, he knew, as was the rest of the castle. The true northerners had all gone with her brother the king, of course, but that didn’t mean that no one else cared. Only a few of the castle’s inhabitants had actually ever set a foot in the North, but even the peasants who'd run from their farmsteads before the Lannisters had burnt them and who otherwise cared little for the war knew that without Winterfell their cause must surely fail. But of course there was nothing they could do to help it. 

While the Blackfish would send out men, these were never more then ten or maybe twenty at a time; scouts, mostly, to provide warning in case of a possible but unlikely Tyrell attack, or one from King’s Landing, and others searching for survivors of Lord Tywin’s host, making sure they wouldn’t regroup. And then there were those whose job was merely to patrol, and to watch, to find any presences of the outlaws and the criminals the war had brought with it, but also to survey the damage done to farms and towns alike. “We just hold,” the Blackfish had told Gendry, explaining this behaviour, “we don’t try anything clever, we’ve got King Robb for that in the field, we just ensure that no one falls in his back. We don’t attack anyone, we don’t start further battles, we just stand here and _stay_ here, no matter what happens.” 

Ser Edmure, of course, was of a different opinion. It apparently didn’t matter to the almost-lord of Riverrun that Arya had out-thought him with his last plan; apparently the man was now constantly plotting out new ones, that made about as much sense as the last one had. Gendry knew that because the Blackfish, while not outwardly or directly telling him about it, would sometimes rumble and mutter that his nephew failed at even the simplest things, and he tended to do it in a way that everyone within ten feet knew what he was on about. And since the castle was, in many ways, a city as well as a castle, with children running through the yards while their parents helped the servants where they could, with all the local gossip that went along with that, he would've been surprised had there been anyone living within its borders who hadn't heard of it before the day ran out. 

He told Arya that, one evening, when they were trading stories the way they’d done since the road to Riverrun (he was surprised Bertha hadn't told her already, but then, neither of them seemed the type for gossip). She smiled, and looked worried, and told him to tell Edmure that he was an idiot. Gendry never did, of course — he was already in enough trouble with who was essentially the lord of Riverrun as it was. 

Apparently Arya then proceeded to tell him herself that evening, in the great hall, if the shouting at the high table was any indication (and the fact that the next morning, Arya appeared in a servant’s garb at the lower tables, sitting herself next to him and Hot Pie. She wouldn’t say where she'd got the clothes, but Gendry suspected her growing friendship with Bertha). 

Everything considered, Gendry thought they made a great job at trying to forget his idea. 

But of course they didn’t. When he was alone Gendry couldn’t stop but worry, worry if his idea had been right or if it had just served to make Arya shut herself off again. 

And then, half a week later, she mentioned it again. 

“I think I can do it,” she said, without any warning whatsoever. 

“Nymeria, I mean,” she clarified once she saw his confusion. They’d actually just been talking about her great-uncle, or rather, he had been and she’d listened (the man was a never-ending source of wisdom and frustration for Gendry, and he wasn’t sure if he hated him or loved him). 

Suddenly the string was cut, and the sword rushed down and slew their conversation. Silence fell, while Arya bit her lip and Gendry thought. 

“You sure?” 

“No. I don’t think I’ll ever be, not really.” 

He nodded. Suddenly he realized that this was what he’d just been telling her; that the Blackfish said that there was no point in waiting; if no new information was likely to arrive, you might as well just act. 

“But …” she hesitated, seeming unsure how much she should tell him, “I saw Bran. In a dream, last night. I think he must be alive.” 

She looked at him, pleading for him to believe her. Of course there was scarcely need for that; Gendry would willingly believe in anything she told him by now. Still, he hoped his face told her enough, for he was too amazed to talk. 

“We … we talked. He told me about Winterfell. He told me he can go into Summer, too, without being dangerous.” 

She thought for a moment. 

“I wonder if Robb can go into Gray Wind, too. Somehow, I never thought to ask … but anyways, if Bran can do it and be fine, I think … I might be, too.” 

Silence gathered around them, until the air seemed thick, like the porridge Hot Pie made in the kitchens. 

Finally, he broke it. 

“Now?” 

Arya nodded, weakly but determined, and laid down on her bed. 

“Step away, Gendry,” she told him, “I don’t want to hit you while I’m gone.” 

Gendry said nothing in response, but instead almost hugged her, holding her arms in his hands. _If she’s going to thrash around, then there’s no need for her to get hurt,_ _either._

Arya sighed, and smiled, and closed her eyes. Suddenly Gendry felt like a little boy who didn’t know what would happen next; the last time it had been like this had been in the City, when he’d been caught at stealing, and the man had threatened to call the goldcloaks. 

Of course he _should_ know what was going to happen. He’d seen it before, after all, the way her eyes rolled in — he suspected that was why she’d closed them, this time, so he didn’t have to see that, after it had scared him so the last time round —, the way she’d stir and occasionally lash out, or scream out a wolf’s howl. 

Still, it felt different. Anxious. Dangerous. Threatening 

And all that he could do was to sit, holding her, while Arya’s body twitched and twisted, shaking against his grip. 

Gendry waited, and could do nothing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm late (and there's exams coming through the next two weeks, so I might be late again …).
> 
> Still, I hope you liked the chapter … this one sort of grew, not in the telling, but _after_ the telling; it was intended to be short, but I found myself adding and adding bits in the middle until it grew to this length, so that it now includes at least some information about what else is going on in this world (which is something that I feel has slipped my mind somewhat in the last few Riverrun-chapters; that there's a Riverrun that's not inhabited by Gendry or Arya or Hot Pie, that there's still Edmure brooding about looking bad, worrying about the loyalty of his lords, that there's still old Hoster Tully lying in his solar in the top of Riverrun's great triangular tower, slowly dying … I also attempted to show the Riverrun that we never get to see in the books, the Riverrun of commoners and servants and maids, where hundreds of servants and war-refugees eat in the great Hall every day)
> 
> Thoughts?


	8. Arya

T he wolves were running, always running. Rest seemed as alien a concept to them as not feeding on flesh.

The wolves were running, and so was she. 

_Yes_ , she thought, _I am, too._

She ran with them, but _not_ together. 

_Flashes._

Trees and branches, undergrowth and hidden bushes, roots sticking out their ancestral ground. 

Sleeping, the dreamer wondered how much growth was to a forest, and how come she'd never noticed it before. 

_Flashes. Jumping._

Another wolf now, also running. 

She was searching for something, she knew. Unlike her, the wolves were wide awake, and their minds as rough and slippery as the forest the themselves ran in, and orientation wasn't easy to be found in them. 

Rage and murder were sticking out at her like a well-assorted weaponry, everything ready to be drawn and used for slaughter. 

If she'd make but one false step … 

_Jumping. Jarring._

Jumping out at her, and drawing. 

They were different, yet all similar. 

All stood looming in her mind. 

All towering. 

And searching, as was she, just not for silence but for food. 

For flesh. Or bones and blood. 

If this was a dream, then it was the strangest of them she'd ever known; and never before had she encountered that feel of being _followed,_ not this intense, not this _real._

That sense of being hunted. 

And of searching. 

A hundred shapes were hanging over her, but only one towered darkly at its center. 

_Flash. Jump._

Another wolf now, even closer to the shifting presence at the center of this horde. 

_No,_ she thought, _not a horde, a _pack.__

She had been away for too long, then, if such simple things like this had begun to fade from her. 

_Jump._

A different part of the forest, in another beast but just as wild as the one before. 

_Jump. Jump. Flash._

Closer, now. Ever closer to the center. 

It grew colder here, and darker for her mind. 

The mind-tower was darker still. 

_Jump._

And here she was at last. Heat and terror and desire for flesh and blood soon overwhelmed her, threatened to tear her limb from limb (except that she didn't have limbs, of course, not in this form of being). 

But if her mind had had a mouth, it would've screamed, then, all the same. 

Everything had fled from her, that which was left was only a desire to flee from this mind, and give in to her all-encompassing fear. 

_Can a man still be brave if he is afraid?_

The words echoed ominously, like a shout in a cave might if it was a gigantic one, or maybe the crypts beneath Winterfell, screamed out at it by some dreamer's part of her that would not ever give in. 

And still the wolves were running. Now that she was here at the center of the pack, she remembered a name. 

It cut through her in a moment, sharper than anything she'd known before. 

_Nymeria._

Steps thundered through the night, a mighty drumbeat heralding death and disaster. 

But death for whom? 

_A village,_ the beast's mind answered. 

_Can a man still be brave if he is afraid?_

The question found its way back to her conscious self, reflected from the edges of their joined minds. 

Then suddenly the trees stopped, and fields appeared, with houses in the distance. 

She could see the people living there. 

_Not for much longer,_ the wolf's mind shouted out in triumph. 

Meanwhile, the dreamer was still wondering, trying to remember. 

_Can a man still be brave if he is afraid?_

And then the answer came to her, as easily as anything could ever hope to do. 

_It is the only time he can be brave_ , said Lord Stark's voice, trusting Robb with this secret while Arya had snug herself into a corner out from view, eager to listen to every word of her father's lips. 

_Nymeria, stop!,_ she cried. 

No human would die tonight, nor in any other night, not at their paws. 

_There are other forests,_ she thought, _with other prey._

There was a struggle, and a shout, but in the end the wolves turned back. 

_Flash._

Her eyes were blinded for a moment, before the world rearranged into another form, somewhere else entirely. 

Gendry's face hovered above her, pale and fearful, though he sought to hide it. 

_I must've been struggling,_ she concluded. Not that it was surprising, of course; when before she'd been in Nymeria's mind it had always been as a visitor, giving gentle suggestions, nudges in a certain direction but never outright commands. Arya had always preferred friends to servants, after all. 

_And that'll never change, not if I can help it._

It had taken her much too long to realize that. So _long_ before she'd even said a word to the chamber maid who'd stood in front of her door out in the cold corridor for more than a week when she'd normally been thick as thieves with her after merely half an hour. She who'd known the name of every man and woman, boy and girl who'd lived in the vicinity of Winterfell for as long as she could remember hadn't even left her chamber, not even for meals, when previously it would've been a rare feat indeed for her to be found in her own rooms and _not_ in the godswood or the training yard, or in the forge or the stables or the great Hall or even the Library Tower (where she'd read about wildling spearwifes and Queen Nymeria of Ny Sar, of course, no matter what Maester Luwin suggested she should read instead). She didn't even have an excuse for it, or at least none that she could think of; no sickness to blame, no stupid needlework assigned to her by her mother or Septa. She just hadn't been outside at all. 

_They miss you,_ Gendry's words came back to her. 

How had it come that she'd never even considered to try and talk to someone, that she'd been afraid even of the bare corridor just outside her door? 

How had she lost touch with all of that? It was like a younger Arya was staring across an abyss, wondering, only the abyss was time itself and there was no way to get over it or around it, and finally that young and cheerful girl's face was lost to the mists and shadows of her memory. 

Suddenly, Arya felt _old._

_When did I start to think like that?_

“Arya you all right?” 

Gendry's voice swept her out of her thoughts. Suddenly she was aware of the passing of time between them, and for how long their silence had reigned. 

_But he waited for me. He gave me the time I needed._

It took her a moment, but finally she got her head to perform that irritatingly difficult motion that people called a _nod._ That sent an obvious wave of relief over Gendry's face. 

_How nice to know that I can do other things than make people afraid,_ she thought. 

“Did the wolves howl again?,” she asked him, because she knew that their threatening cry had haunted him since that day in the chamber where he'd been in chains. He would never admit it to her, but if there was one thing that Gendry truly was incapable of, then it was hiding what he felt from her. 

_He's certainly better at thinking than I had thought._

“Yes.” 

His voice shook a little, but that was all. Of course it was nonsense, but it was almost like the dark rings from under his eyes were gone now. As if the fear and low-state panic his face has used to show had disappeared. Still, she felt the need to be sure, instead of merely guessing. 

“Were you afraid?” 

“Were you?,” he handed the question right back to her, and she had to think it over. 

“A little,” she admitted, “or maybe a lot. But less than I had thought I'd be.” 

There were other questions of course, and even important ones, sentences like _how long was I gone?_ that begged pronouncing. If it had been longer than a day --- which might be, or might not; hopping from mind to mind made judging time and distance hard, she'd found --- then what had happened while she was away? It couldn't be _too_ long, or else she'd be starving, she reasoned --- but then, Maester Luwin had kept Bran alive for _weeks_ while he'd been asleep all the while, so she really couldn't be sure. 

But, most important of all, had he been stupid enough to stay by her side the whole time? 

She hoped he'd been, and she hoped he hadn't. There was no real consensus in her mind on that matter just yet. 

“Did I thrash around much?” 

It was strange, she thought; somehow, she was able to be here and out in the Riverlands at the same time, could control half an army --- _no, not an army, just a pack, seeking its way to survive_ \--- while she was at it, but keeping track of what her own body was doing during she wasn't living in it was beyond her capabilities. 

“A little. Nothing too bad.” 

There was an unsure smile on Gendry's face, and Arya hoped she hadn't hit him too hard. 

If there was one thing these eyes told her then it was that while he wasn't entirely comfortable with what she'd just done, he did know that it had been necessary. Nor would this be the end of it, Arya suspected; Nymeria and her wolves --- because they truly were _Nymeria's_ wolves, and not Arya's --- weren't lap-dogs that one could just tell what to do; instead, Nymeria was as much wild beast as she'd been loving companion to her before (and probably still was, just not right there and now). 

But that was fine, of course. However much Nymeria was wild and dangerous, she was also _Arya's_ , and the same animal who'd started her life as a little pup so long ago in the halls and yards of Winterfell, and still Arya's to take care of. 

_Nymeria is only the monster I make her to be,_ she thought, and knew it to be true. 

If left to roam the lands free she'd do what every direwolf would do to survive, and if Arya asked her to slay her enemies she would, as she'd shown so thoroughly with Lord Tywin. 

_In truth, none of this has ever been her fault,_ Arya thought. If anyone's, it had been her's, for forgetting what Nymeria was and could be. As long as that didn't happen again, and as long as Arya could care for her, no one would have to get hurt ever again. 

Or at least not by wolf. 

There were still the Lannisters, of course --- though hopefully they'd all been brought to justice by Stannis already. Her father had always said that Stannis was nothing if not just, so Arya had little doubt that Cersei and Joffrey would die if King's Landing had changed ownership. 

“This isn't wholly over, is it? You'll have to do this again” Gendry asked her, having sensed at least some of her thoughts. 

“Yes,” she told him, “but the hardest part is done, I think.” 

And the following days proofed the truth of her words. Every two days she'd slip into Nymeria's mind again, slowly directing her to places where there was still ample game to be found, with no need to go to the trouble of attacking men. Gendry would always be there, holding her hand, speaking words of comfort probably without realizing just how much they were welcome and appreciated. Not strictly speaking _needed_ , Arya guessed, but welcome all the same. That was the whole point of having a friend, wasn't it? Even if you might have managed without him, you didn't want to. 

And of course there were other people, too, Bertha the maid and Hot Pie and Kevan and Koval, the apprentice-smiths who'd once shared a chamber with Gendry. There were the peasant's children running in the yards and sleeping in the great Hall, and there were the squires of Lord Tully's knights. 

In the following days she made friends of some of them, got into shouting matches with others, but learnt all of their names by heart no matter if they were nice or not. Maybe she would never trust them as much as she would've done _before_ , but she guessed that was all right. 

If she wanted someone to trust then there would always be Gendry, after all. 

It was three days later, then, when the raven from King's Landing arrived. 

_Sansa's coming._

It wasn't the only thing the letter said, of course; the parchment was stuffed with writing, with information about the situation in the city itself --- which Arya listened to carefully when Ser Edmure read it to her, not because she was interested, but because she thought that Gendry might be, having lived there for all his life --- as well as a summary of King Stannis's policies and actions, together with some speculation and gossip about his plans for continuing the war. There was all that and a lot more, but Arya didn't really pay any attention to it after her mother had announced that Stannis had kept his promise to her and released Sansa. 

So now when Lady Catelyn would return to Riverrun again, Arya's sister would be with her. 

She might have expected to be anxious about that, or uneasy, but in the end she found she was just happy. 

Maybe Sansa was better at being a lady than she was, and maybe they weren't really on the best of terms, but these things they could work out. Suddenly these problems, while ceasing to be important, didn't seem as _major_ any more. What was important was that Sansa was free again, and the rest would come later. 

The next day was spent in a blur of joy for her --- maybe not entirely untainted, but still pure enough to enjoy --- which was only amplified when Maester Vyman announced he had some other news to break to her. News from Winterfell. News from Bran. 

Of course she'd known that Bran was probably well; after weeks of living with it, she'd just accepted that whatever she saw in dreams was often true, although sometimes the dreams would ring more like the truth than at other time. 

But there was also news from Robb, too. 

More than a little, in fact. While she'd been busy hiding in her room apparently Robb had crossed the Ruby Ford and joined up with Lord Bolton, but before having a chance to throw himself against Moat Cailin not only had Lord Wyman Manderly attacked the same from the north (and consequentially taken it in less than two days of siege), but Roose Bolton had revealed that old Lord Walder Frey had planned to sell them all out to Lord Tywin. Of course that plot had already died by then, but it held Robb back in the South nonetheless. 

Not that it mattered much, now that Winterfell had finally broken its silence, and Robb's kingdom wasn't lying in shreds anymore. 

Nothing was over yet, not even close. 

But Arya's perpetual feeling of bleakness had vanished. 

And that had to count for something, hadn't it? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this took me so long. Was a tough one to write, and I didn't really have too much time for it, either …
> 
> I knew that this would be the last chapter (well, last before the epilogue) for a while now, but I hadn't quite realized how much there was still left to wrap up in it, and how hard that would be when the chapter had to focus on something else entirely (i.e. the conclusion of Arya's struggle with warging). I hope I managed, and I hope this feels like an ending, but not one of the cheap, over-done sort …
> 
> So anyways, there'll be an epilogue, and then this will be done. It took me the better part of a year, after all, and there are other stories that I want to tell, and this one feels like it might be done now.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> See you in the epilogue.
> 
> Thoughts on this one?


	9. Epilogue

Winter is coming, the Stark words had always been. _Only now they aren’t correct_ _anymore_ , Arya thought to herself. Winter wasn’t _coming_ , not anymore, it was already _here_. And for all that she called herself a daughter of the North and had always poked fun at Gendry’s troubles with Winterfell’s usual weather, suddenly even she had to admit that it was _cold._

Or maybe not just cold, but _freezing._ The very air outside felt frozen the way a solid block of ice was water frozen solid. 

Only a very few places were still warm, and they were just about to leave the most important of them. No matter if a layer of snow the height of a horse had buried the lands, no matter if there was not a single liquid drop of water to be found anywere that wasn’t a pot simmering over a campfire — Winterfell was still riding out to war, even if no one could see farther than a few feet when there was a blizzard, or maybe a few yards when there was not. 

But when the Wall called for aid, then Winterfell would always come. In the end, it really was that simple. 

“It’s funny, isn’t it?,” she told Gendry one day, while he was sweating over his work in the castle’s forge where he’d long ago made his home, after Theon Turncloak had murdered Mikken years ago. 

“When we were all still children we lived in terror of the creatures in Old Nan’s stories, and still we’d always beg her to tell us more. And then we went out and away one day, and grew up, until we were all convinced she’d just told us made-up tales, but now look where we’ve ended up now.” 

Gendry ceased his hammering for a moment and put the something-or-other he was making into a burning furnace. Arya helped him with the bellows. Normally that would be an apprentice’s job, but given that they were all as busy as Gendry himself with equipping the North’s army, she felt it wouldn’t hurt. 

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have grown up then, Arya.” 

She said nothing in return; working in a forge proofed to be much harder than she had expected. With her sweat forming little currents running down her body, she suddenly understood why Gendry seldom wore a shirt when working. 

The best reply she could manage was a grin, while she wondered how he could do this all day and still _talk._

Naturally, she didn’t want to admit that to him, although he’d probably already guessed. He knew her much too well by now, not that Arya minded. 

What she _did_ mind was her sweat freezing her (somewhat shortish, down-beat, and a deliberate if well-meaning mockery of ladyness) gown to her body once she had to step back outside again. It felt like being thrown into one of Winterfell’s hot springs to find that somehow they’d cooled down and were now filled with ice water, only worse, because she could actually _feel_ the water slowly turning solid on her skin, biting at her as it did so. 

She wondered if there had ever been such cold before, here or anywhere else on this earth. 

_I could ask Bran,_ she thought, _he’d know, probably._ It was just that it always felt funny, standing in front of Winterfell’s heart tree and hoping that Bran happened to be there. There was so little of her brother in that hard white face that was weeping blood (strangely, the only liquid that was wouldn’t freeze the instant it was exposed to air — even the hot springs, while not outright frozen over, had acquired little icy rims), and talking to ravens just felt exceedingly silly. Much better to just talk to him at night and in the relative comfort of a dream, where he always looked like the boy with auburn hair and blue eyes that he truly was, even if his eyes _did_ occasionally show short flashes of an earthy green. Also, in dreams it wasn’t so damned _cold_. 

Finally making it through the courtyard and through a backdoor that normally wasn’t used by anyone but servants she found herself in a half-deserted corridor that wasn’t really _warm_ , but infinitely less frozen than the world outside. And one of the good things about the convoluted way that Winterfell had been built in was that you could get almost anywhere in the castle without stepping outside (except for the forge, obviously; connecting it to the rest would just mean a needless risk in case it should ever catch fire, although Arya wasn’t sure if anything even _could_ burn in this weather) if you only knew where to go, and for her it was the easiest thing in the world to get back to her own chamber. Inside, it already looked almost like what she imagined a wildling warcamp might be, stuffed to the brim not only with warm clothes but also things no one normally thought of — lacking room elsewhere in the castle (which was full of Stark bannermen and smallfolk and people running around the place in general, and they’d found that storing things in corridors and halls wasn’t the best of ideas), there was even a small sleigh, to transport drinking water in blocks of ice, which they’d melt over their campfire. What she was actually searching for, though, she found carelessly thrown over a pair of shoes (of the sort that had ridiculously large soles, to prevent sinking into the snow). The towel was still somewhat damp, but it would have to do. Once she felt somewhat drier (and the cloth somewhat smellier, not that she really cared about that) she finally made her way to what they’d dubbed the “council chamber”, where Robb was working out his plans, as late to a meeting as she’d ever been. 

Riding to war, she’d found, brought an entirely unexpected amount of planning and organization with it, which she’d missed out on the last time, when she’d largely been hiding in a bedchamber, and once she’d come out again the whole thing had already almost been over, or close enough to make little actual difference. 

Now, though, it was quite a different matter, and as much as she found the endless talks annoying she recognized that they were important as well. 

Most of it was about who would go and who would stay; travelling north would be hazardous at best and fatal at worst — no one could afford illusions about that — and the true art now lay in taking enough men with them to stand a chance, but not so many that they’d all starve on their way. Indeed, many of Robb’s lords hadn’t brought many men with them to Winterfell at all, following precisely that reasoning; there was much less risk in sending them to the Wall directly without the added detour to their liege. Still, they themselves were all here, both Jon Umbers, Ser Helman Tallhart, tough-as-sinew old Maege Mormont (who was Arya’s personal hero and mentor), the more ladylike Barbrey Dustin, Galbart Glover and Rodrick Ryswell, Lord Edmure Tully (much to her chagrin, the Blackfish wasn’t, though; but then, _someone_ had to keep an eye on the Riverlands), both Lord Tytos Blackwood and Lord Jonos Bracken (although they insisted on being placed as far away from each other as was in any way possible, to the continued annoyance of everyone else involved), even Lord Howland Reed, who’d left his long-standing isolation in the Neck. Lord Wyman Manderly alone had chosen to send an envoy instead of coming himself (although consensus between Arya herself, the Greatjon and Maege Mormont was that if anyone had no business being irritated by the biting cold, then it was the one man alive who had more fat than any whale. Although they were forced to admit that probably his horse didn’t enjoy such luck). Several minor Lords and Masters (or landed knights, from the south) whom Arya still didn’t really knew, Lord Sigorn Thenn (who’d risen to Master of the Dreadfort and part of the surrounding lands after he’d helped to defeat the Boltons’ fiendish plots, who was still regarded with some suspicion but had proofed to be an invaluable treasury full with knowledge on how to fight in the midst of blizzards), Lord Rickard Karstark and his remaining sons, Eddison Tollett (who was there to represent the Night’s Watch as well as life’s continuous bleakness) and of course Robb himself, Sansa (who was in charge of support and supplies, and would be the Stark in Winterfell while the others were away) and their mother, who was still the first among Robb’s counsellors. Also, the mandatory raven representing Bran, although he’d complained to her more than once that no one really took that seriously. Not that Arya could really blame anyone for it. 

None of them really noticed her slipping in too late, although Meage Mormont sent her a disapproving look, and the Greatjon gave her a pat on the shoulder. It was probably meant in a friendly way, but with the man being the size he was it still almost knocked her over, causing the man to crack one of his booming laughs. Not that she minded; she’d take that over the constantly bickering Riverlanders any chance she’d get. 

But if she’d thought the council meetings were hazardous, then the road north could as well have been leading straight to all hells anyone had ever believed in (though likely except for the seven southern ones, because by all accounts, these were warm and cozy; Eddison Tollett was a never-ending source of wisdom there). 

Even in a tent so stuffed with people that they formed something like a heap of bodies she managed to feel the cold, and Gendry (who was pressed in a sort-of awkward angle lying next to her) outright shivered now and again. A week into their march, and the entire camp felt miserable, downbeat and half-frozen. Not that anyone really showed it; the northmen simply made jokes about how this was nothing (although no one believed them), making fun of the few southerners who’d been stupid enough to come along not knowing what to expect. At least they didn’t have any trouble with feeding themselves, thanks to Sansa’s wise planning and Bran’s continuous intervention consisting of meat-carrying ravens (and the occasional gift from Nymeria’s pack, even if the wolves were as starving as the men were; Arya kept them at a safe distance from one another best as she could). 

Dimly, she remembered the trips across the north she’d made before: going south to King’s Landing, going back north after the fragile peace with both Stannis and self-proclaimed King of the Reach Mace Tyrell had been struck (who were both too busy fighting the other one, anyways, while the Reach had slowly fallen apart when several of its lords had refused to follow King Tyrell and instead joined Stannis or proclaimed themselves). She hadn’t ridden against Lord Bolton when his plot had been revealed, but _did_ go to Harrenhal when Aegon the Maybe-Targaryen arrived, together with Nymeria’s pack, in an impressive (and successful) display of northern power nudging him to try his might at other targets first, and after that she’d visited several holdfasts and castles and even villages that had been damaged greatly by some fight or other to show the Starks still cared for their people no matter what had gone wrong in the days and months before. 

All of these trips had felt long and tiring, but all had been nothing compared to this, even the last few when winter had already started to claim the lands. 

The days stretched out forever, and even the Greatjon seemed to have trouble making up new bawdy jokes as time slowly ground along. Gendry started talking about how he wished to be back in Winterfell, and even as she mocked him for it Arya found her heart agreed with him. 

But they couldn’t turn back, not here and not now. 

_If the Wall calls for aid, the North will come to aid. Always._

And so they came, miserable and cursing and freezing, but the came just the same. 

Also, Arya _couldn’t_ turn back; Jon was at the Wall, after all, and it had been years since she’d seen him. As Lord Commander, it had only been once, when he’d signed a treaty with Robb for the Wildlings to come south. 

They joined up with them when in the Gift, where Jon had placed most of them, or at least with those that hadn’t yet gone to the Wall on their own to man the long-abandoned castles and battlements along its length. Arya remembered the tales about them she’d read as a child (and the stories of Old Nan, where Wildlings were always wicked and evil, snatching women from their fathers and husbands, but she ignored these) and soon found herself eagerly making friends and companions among them. 

Two days later, and they’d reached the Wall at Castle Black. Jon was there, of course, and though they all had little time to spare he’d still found some time, spent trading stories with her. And at the Wall itself it seemed that the whole of Westeros had come to aid; all these people who’d fought and lost in one war or another stood now here. So many names that she remembered belonging elsewhere; there was an Edric Dayne, newly-proclaimed Sword of the Morning, who looked like someone who’d jumped out of songs (although, she discovered, he was actually a little younger than herself, and thought the same of the girl with the wolves at her back); there were Tyrion Lannister and Sandor Clegane, even some Dornish, like Quentyn and Trystane Martell, who had astonishingly little problem with the cold; finally, she came across a boy named Podrick Payne (she asked him if he could stare the way Ser Ilyn had, and when he admitted he’d never tried but did so then she’d laughed aloud, and he’d joined in and laughed with her). She’d heard that there was an Asha Greyjoy, too, at Eastwatch-by-the-sea, and even a Danaerys Targaryen was supposedly on her way north from where she’d landed in the Stormlands. 

It was cold, of course, and no one had ever found the time or resources to properly rebuild the castle itself (several parts of which looked to be in worse condition than Winterfell’s Broken Tower), so the wind would come howling through the corridors whenever the crude patches they’d made of wool and cloaks failed, but for the most part they managed not to despair. That night, Arya slept in one of these little chambers that would normally have been used for newly-arrivals, crammed in together with Gendry and two other people she’d rarely ever seen before. Vaguely, she wondered if maybe this was the same chamber in which Jon had once slept, and if so, whether or not he’d put her in it on purpose. Still, sleep came eventually, as restless and fearful as anything. 

And after that it wasn’t long. 

The next so-called morning (or when morning should’ve been, even if the sun stubbornly refused to admit it) she was in the north, the _true_ north, north of the Wall itself, directing Nymeria in a hell of ice and snow and trees, filled with dead men walking and other, stranger horrors. 

Gendry was somewhere up at the top of the Wall supplying men with arrows (for all his training with the Blackfish, he’d never become a great shot himself), and in some corner of her mind she was sure that Jon was up there, too, maybe giving a rousing speech to his men, while she was down here, clinging to Nymeria’s fur while they were rushing through the whiteness, her old Needle in hand (though Gendry had covered the blade in obsidian shards, to make it effective here). 

In the days and months she’d spent in Riverrun she’d so often wondered about the direwolf pups and who had sent them, and most of all _why_ , fearing that maybe it hadn’t been the Old Gods after all but instead some demon searching to destroy her and all else that was. 

But now finally she knew. It _had_ been the old northern Gods, or one of them at least, one who’d still remembered what was coming, who’d still prepared them. 

_The North Remembers,_ she thought, _and even if people’s memories have faded, the North_ _itself will_ never _forget._

And this here was the _why_ she’d searched for so long. This was their true purpose, and she was ready to fulfil it. 

The battle was desperate, of course, and a close thing. 

Or at least it would’ve been until suddenly the air was filled with fire; with the fire of the dragons who’d been reborn into this world. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here we are, in the last chapter (can't believe I've actually finished a work I began …).
> 
> Well, it's certainly been an interesting journey writing this and publishing chapters (almost) every week for more than half a year. I've learnt a lot on how to write, I'd say, and I hope you got some enjoyment out of this thing I wrote.
> 
> I'm not sure yet what I'll do next; there're some ideas on my mind for fanfic, some for short stories and at least two novels that I'd like to write should I ever find the time, and I really don't know which of these I'll do first. Might be I post something here in a week or two, might be it takes a little longer.
> 
> Any thoughts on this one last chapter? One this thing as a whole? If so, leave a comment, if not, I'll thank you for being here and still reading this anyways.


End file.
